Pogs, A Chest and questions

"Tocktoo!" I heard my grandmother shout from behind me. Her voice had the same tone it did when she would yell at me when I forgot to secure the door to our hut. Tocktoo suvaglu una." It rings in my head today as much as it did when I was truly in my twenties. I smiled and turned to face my fair with my matriarch. "Yes, grandmother," I responded in English which elicited a smirk of disapproval on the calligraphy that scrolled across her face. "When did you brother come back? Where the hells has he been that even I couldn't reach him?" She demanded to know, I watched as she fell into her I'm listening stance. Of course I had no idea, none of us knew or understood where he could have been. Just as I was about to answer with what I knew there was a thud at my door, Steven walked in. "Gods, Steven would it kill you to actually knock knock!" I hated that he just walked into my room as if he owned it. Though to be fair in our early life after he left to pursue his life passions, I had taken his room as my own. I suppose the sentiment never changes with brothers." Hey gran, I felt you come over." Steven said as if he hadn't even heard me." I was just about to call for you, I can't find anything in the archives about alternate theories of molecular displacement and spell weaving in fifth dimensions. I could have sworn there was a book in the archive but I can't find?" Steven asked grandmother and ignoring my annoyed tone. I think it's the same for all brothers, or maybe siblings even. We hate to love each other and love to hate one another. Steven and June started talking as I remembered us as children. Steven chased me around the settlement picking and teasing me. I would run from whatever wicked thing he was teasing me with. I would cry and yell for grandmother to stop him, he would chase me even more. I never seemed to have the upper hand until one day, I must have had enough because as he chased me around the fire with goddess knows what, I was screaming and crying for someone to stop him, when suddenly I stopped running, I stopped crying. I turned in place and with all the force my little body could muster, I balled my tiny fist and hit Steven as hard as I could in the chest. I couldn't have been more than six years old, I hadn't learned to summon fey essence to enhance my mundane strength but I still hit hard. Steven. Stopped and screamed at the top of his lungs. It was late in the morning but the sun hadn't reached its apex. As the day went on Steven cried to grandma, telling her how much it hurt. She smiled, patted him on the shoulder and simply said,'' Don't cry over something you asked for." Then she turned back to whatever task was at hand. He begged and cried until June finally agreed to have the healers council look him over. So the trek was made from one side of the encampment to the other, over Snake river with our seal skin boat. The healers looked him over, much more gingerly than they would have any other child of the village. Steven being born as part of the leading cast. Something I always hated was the attention our family received, how much attention the rest of the village paid our family. It went against everything our people believed in once upon a time in a village so long ago. I guess June was right about everything changing or dying. Though we never changed and as of yet we've ever died.

After interrupting everyone's night, I decided it would be nice to prepare breakfast for everyone. House of course helped as did many of the creatures that called our home sanctuary. A 'Shroom troll living within the walls was the last of his kind. Though long lived they were hunted out of existence by the human world. A fear of their ability to alter the minds of mortals caused fear and panic in the early part of the seventeen hundreds and every bush and stone was turned hunting for the trolls to exterminate them. As more and more of them died off nature seeking balance created a mundane mushroom that had the same effect if eaten. A funny if not ironic joke the universe liked to play on mortals it seems was to take anything they hate and create a way for it to infect their lives. Pogs, the 'Shroom troll' was bringing in eggs and some veggies from the grounds as I brought water to boil in a copper pot, I chopped onions and fresh green chives. I had coffee and tea set out as the first of my brothers and sister stumbled into the room. Each still half asleep, to say it was morning would be a stretch. A few more minutes later it would be lunch time.``Morning brother." Each of them mumbled as they took cups of coffee and tea

As I broke the eggs into a wooden bowl that was our mothers in the nineteen eighties, I looked down into the bowl and remembered the aesthetics of the times. It was a laminate bowl with layers of wood crossed over one another in large square shaped patterns with a deep and rich red brown. It had signs of ages and ages of use on it, parts worn from being held by multiple hands over time. I was beating the eggs while the rich aroma of toasted bread and jams filled the room. Oddly when we were in the kitchen the silent rules of arrangement didn't seem to matter as much as they did in other areas of the house. Whereas at dinner or in a meeting we all naturally gravitated to places next to one another, here in the kitchen everyone just pulled in wherever felt the most comfortable to them. Some to the left and right of the fireplace, others a chair in the corner watching the world out of the ancient windows, made so long ago that time had caused warps in the glass where the plasticity of the glass had caused it to droop. The whole room was full of worms and the promise of a good day. The kitchen was also strangely one of the only places that House had never changed. Any upgrades were made by hand and at our own cost. So the dimensions had never changed, nor had the floors, the windows, even the walls with its many tiny pricks of holes where pictures had been moved or replaced over time. The long wooden table that grandmother had made was still in use in the kitchen, though after the first thousand years we had it planned and stained to fit into any time period that would come past us. If you looked close at the bottom of the table you could still see bits of salt that had crystallized as the drift wood used to construct the table dried out. Little bits of the sea, sealed away in our table and encased in stain and glaze. Looking around there were so many artifacts left to use from different family members and different eras of our family. We still had extended family out there though we long stopped talking to most of them. So many had forgotten that we exist, either by the nature of time or enforced by the religions that dominated our people today. Our life was made unaccessible to them. It was most likely for the best, knowledge of us would only make things hard for them. Even the fey blood running in our line had been talked away as a myth or old family tails. Stories still told around a campfire as cautionary tales of what happens when you make deals with spirits or demons who come knocking in the night.

Robbie was preoccupied with an herb or plant root he had brought in with him, I can only hope that he kept it away from the food or the drinks. Goddess knows what it was. I only know I didn't recognize it so it must be something new and possibly nasty to ingest. It seemed solid enough but it oozed all over itself then took up what it was dripping as if desperate to maintain itself. Karen brought him a cup of tea. The research guild had sworn off stimulants of any kind unless it was needed to treat something so tea was the strongest morning beverage. He has created a flower that smelled like a cross between roses and pumpkin blossom but tastes like cucumber with a hint of mint in it, and strangely turned the hot water a ting of purple. I didn't like it myself, it seemed a bit bitter and left me overwhelmingly hungry after I drank it. Pogs had made himself busy with pancakes and biscuits to accompany the eggs and deer sausage I had on the cook top. It was comical to watch Pogs cook in a human sized kitchen as his head only just cleared the top of the table. He always made it work no matter the meal, through the use of stools, step ladders and a touch of magic he always managed to cook amazing meals when we hosted parties or had formal dinners. The rest of the time Pogs did whatever Pogs chose to do. We didn't demand anything of the beings that called our house home but everyone was willing to help out whenever it was needed.

I had just finished up the eggs and sausage when a sudden boom rang through the halls and rooms of our home. We all looked around stunned and the eggs I had just finished were now flat on the floor. I dropped them at the shock, House had never made a sound like it before and again in theory nothing can enter our home unless invited. I looked around at the equally startled faces looking back at me, soon we were all running into the hall to see what was happening.

"By the Gods!" Steven exclaimed, David and Mathew shared his sentiment. A hole, a huge hole had split the hall in half and a gape tore through the magic that was the lifeblood of House. Sparks and flurries of magic skirted the jagged edges of the hall and small wisps of energy swirled in the air as if House was bleeding out into the world. Without a second thought all of us thrust our essence into the gap closing the tear that had formed. We pushed and pulled energy together like a surgeon with stitches on their patients wounds. Calling back into being what had been destroyed. Even expressions had been destroyed, the items now lost. Expressions couldn't be remade so easily. We also knew house inch for inch and nail for nail, recreating what had been was that much easier for us as a collective. There was a force stopping us from completely healing the damage done to the house but I couldn't see it. The rest of the family had noticed as well, six faces looked back and forth brows furrowed. Other inhabitants of our home stubbled out of doors and passages each throwing their essence into the mix with ours in an attempt to heal the damage done. Progress was being made but the struggle was so hard that smaller beings had to pull back, not wanting to exhaust the energy they had and killing themselves it was practical for them to pull back,though some were immortal like us not all of them could afford to spend so much of their power like our family was able to. After a few hard moments and a few struggles of spell work the walls and ceiling came back into being but the floor was still split open like a scar of missing wood. After checking on my family I jumped into the hole to see what had created such a mess out of our home. In the pit, that borrowed dozens of feet into the ground long past the layers of history that pre-date the current placement of our grounds. The bones of older structures that were transported here from our homeland in Alaska. There were items buried under our property that would bring an archeologist to their knees in envy and greed. Past all of that, past all the things that were the foundation of our home lay a chest, iron clad and covered in etched leather lay there."Its a Chest!" I yelled up to my friends and family who were peeking over the edge of the whole. "Like a mans chest or a womens chest?" David yelled back."Why would it be male or female? What the hell are you…?" I jumped up, holding the chest in my hands. It was about a foot long and half that deep."OOH a chest, chest you mean" Matt said. "What in the hells do you think I meant?" I asked back, shaking my head as we all stared down at what was in my hand. It was old, older than anything we had in the house, older than any of us. It had hand crafted iron bands that clasped that wrapped around from base to bottom and corners. Creating a clasp complete with a pad-lock made out of iron, however missing its key. Finally with the infliction out of its wound, House was able to start patching over its wound. Slowly the two parts of the floor crawled toward one another, we turned back to the kitchen. The other beings in the house followed slowly behind us, shortest in front to the tallest in back, everything from pixie to Gargoyles walked behind us. The leather was smooth and unscathed, looking as new as the day it must have been made, the lock untouched and smooth as the day it had been locked. Even the iron was rustless with a polish that seems to be freshly buffed into its coarse hammer marks. The question wasn't what was it, more what was in it and why did it crash though our wards set House and its walls with such force?

It was embossed with some kind of sigil that looked like a constellation but none that we knew from any of the realms that we regularly watch over, in fact we couldn't determine the beast that the leather had come from. It was rough but had no pinches,pricks,or patches like many animals skinned to make leather, it was thicker than most but so much stronger than any other we had seen. The iron was Elven iron which didn't mean much as it could be explained by any number of reasons or means that it came to be on this chest. As elven iron is the only iron that can be manipulated by and enchanted with essence and spell work it would be reasonable to bind the box in it. Though it made it that much easier to track due to the lack of large numbers of elvish iron workers ever or currently in practice. The major question was what was in it? "What do you think it has inside?" Robbie asked with his ever curious tone. A perfect question,"I can't see inside it and my essence can't force it open." I answered, distracted by my attempts to force my way inside. "It must be spelled by a family older than we are." I heard Karen mutter from somewhere next to me. I had to wonder who though, there were two families as old or older than us, and even they couldn't match us power for power. "I wonder where it came from and how it got here?" Larry said with a growl in his voice that always gave away his suspicion that something was a major threat but Larry thought everything was a threat to our family. Explaining of course his leadership of the warriors guild.``Who would threaten us, we have never done anything to anyone. We don't rule but we guide with fairness in mind. Who would want to hurt us, who would want to harm House?" House was the most peaceful being in existence, by the gods, it created a space safe for anyone in need of a place to rest. It was a cloistered space that was both a part of and separate of House itself. It had a door that appeared to anyone in need and another that would appear for us to enter from our home itself. Karen and Robbie were the most common of us to ever with Larry following behind at times to check for anyone that could be dangerous to House or us.

Over centuries over ages of ages so many beings have rested under the eves of our home. As far back as before we were officially immortal. When the settlement was still small and hadn't yet spanned across the river. To a time before the House was a living being. Grandmother would allow creatures of the human world and the fey world to rest under her roof and near the fire. Feeding them as well. It was her duty she had imposed on herself. A practice that we and House imposed on ourselves as well, not because we felt we had to, not because it was enforced but because it was the kind thing to do. Still it would seem that someone or something had decided that we were a target and that a message of some kind had to be sent, or was it simply that someone had a message that we needed to hear, a message for our ears and minds only.

I kept being drawn back to the sigil, it reminded me of something but I couldn't place it. I know I'd seen it but just in passing and then only in a casual setting. "Do any of you know what this sigil is? I think it's a constellation of some kind but I can't place it in any other known world?" I asked everyone as we set the chest on the breakfast table, each of us taking up our mugs of coffee or tea. The leather was so dark it was almost chocolate read. Another clue was the chest itself, four symbols on each side were the arcane symbols for the four main elements. Not many species of fey blood are associated with all four elements. Even with in our family each of aligned more with one over the other, though being such a large family we balanced out the energies if not individually but as a collecting. Matt turned it, making the air symbol facing him, causing the box in question to sit at odd angles to one another. As Matt looked down and studied the symbol with his hands as much as his eyes, I felt around the handle on one side and I felt the draw of old magics at work, something predating our understanding of essence building, even older than expressions' existence. "I don't know the sigil off hand but give me a little time and I'll be closer to an answer." Robbie answers. As he looked up at Karen, David, and Matt. Jerking his head toward the door. So they all got up and headed out."What about breakfast?" I asked as my brothers and sister headed out of the room. I looked around and saw plates of food pop out of existence, disappointment on my face. Pog looked up, patted me on the hand," I worked all morning for this breakfast.!" Pog started cleaning up, working around me he looked over at the chest, and nonchalantly said. "That looks like the ancient name for what's called NewFoundland. The mother tree." Pog didn't say anything else as he whistled and cleaned the counter tops.