My brain chose an unholy setting to start degenerating into squabbling bits of gibberish. I was currently dangling over a three stage drop by my fingertips. One big unhappy subset of my brain was emphatic in disparaging my abysmal skills at self preservation. Other less villainous brain cells were directing my lungs to acquire enough oxygen without the accompanying chest heaves that would throw off my delicate mid-air equilibrium. Yet another part of my brain was obsessively tracking the slip of my fingers, and the amount of skin they were donating to the abrasive roof tiles in their failing grip. My arms and shoulder-sockets were complaining loudly to an annoying bit that had morphed into a tiny, evil accountant. Each bit wailed for my attention. I tried to let out an attention-grabbing growl, and all that came out were weak gasps. Disgusted, I dragged myself up enough to hook one bare knee over the protruding lip of roof and finally, gratefully, let myself roll over.
“I swear to never go roof-walking again without my rope and grapple,” I gritted out to the judgemental irritant in my head. It continued grumbling.
“I will rest up before trying anything remotely insane again,” I promised myself on a more reconciliatory note.
My lungs seemed to be handling themselves better now, although they were still inflating my chest enough to provide a fair bit of entertainment to leering eyes. Cautiously using my arms to lever myself up, I pointed out their improved condition to the jabbering accountant bit in my brain. And a new little voice in my head suddenly made itself heard.
“It’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone,” it tweeted in panicked tones.
The stink was gone. The nauseating, musky stench that had been the scent trail I was using to track the perichyali had mysteriously vanished. My nose is a weapon by itself. It is like a wolf’s on stimulants. And if I couldn’t get a trace of the smell, then it hadn’t been there for the last hour at least. A quick scan of the roof in front of me showed that the claw scritches were missing too. It was impossible! The smell and tracks had been blatantly present till the edge of the last roof I had so irreverently flung myself over. The leap between roofs was nothing for the lithe perichyali that could coil and uncoil to add to its momentum mid-air. And just as a precaution, I checked the ground between the roofs. No marks of anything falling to its death there and definitely no corpse. To top it all off, the rose-hued sky was being rapidly overtaken by pregnant storm clouds that promised to try and wash me down the gently sloping roofs.
I needed a perichyali, and I needed one now! Trying not to panic, I bent my focus on the roof, searching for some marker that I had missed. I had barely a half-talis before the storm burst. Mentally cursing the idiot mage genius who had created the critters that were the only bearers of kuvarna anti-venom, I searched for tracks. The perichyali tracks consist of two deep outer claw scritches with six light claw scritches between for each of the two hind feet, and a blurry pad mark for each of the two front paws. And then there’s the curvy line of shined tiles from dragging its belly.
“Stinky bastards. There’s no end to you, and so many of you, and still – when I need one, just one, where can I find you? Feh! Mage Feelarn and his foolish brain. Didn’t he realize that taking a kuvarna’s speed and senses, and adding a rat’s survival instincts, violence and pack mentality, that it’s freaking impossible to catch one? Well, just wait till one of you is bitten by a freaking kuvarna and you need to catch one of your brothers to get the anti-venom… Although, I guess you could just spit on the wound. Stupid Feelarn. I wonder if he every tried catching one of these things alive, and then extracting the anti-venom without getting bitten. Feh!” Muttering constantly, I sniffed and peered my way around the roof.
I had been enormously lucky the last few nights. I had caught three perichyali, and been able to get fresh anti-venom for my mother. And then I had to kill the things as they don’t make the anti-venom when caged, and they cannot be tamed. The one redeeming factor was that perichyali meat is a delicacy, fraught with mouth-watering flavours, so we got to enjoy a nice meal at least. And I got a few minutes to bask in my mum’s smile again. My mother, my only surviving parent who I have adored since the moment the word “adore” entered my childish dictionary, has been bitten by a kuvarna. Kuvarnas attack very rarely and only when something or someone frightens them. When they do bite, the venom ejection from their glands occurs at such a high rate of acceleration, that it causes the kuvarna to suffocate to death. The venom is deadly. It was because of me that my mother was distracted into stepping on a kuvarna and getting bitten by it. Being responsible for a kuvarna’s death doesn’t make me wake up in a cold sweat at night. But, being the indirect cause of my mother’s death has been driving me to climb walls, literally, in the last three days. Only her previously hidden (from me) skill as a 2nd stage Unveiler prevented her from becoming my second deceased parent. She still has a high probability of being overcome with seizures at any time. Which is why I am out on the hunt, desperately trying to trap another live perichyali for its anti-venom producing glands.
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