Pogs Visits the Strange Sisters

I went to my room to rest and think things over, somehow the flower, the Quill of Destiny, the Chest, Pogs, and Tessa were all connected. The question was how, or why. Again a host of questions without answers but I'm getting closer, I could feel it. I walked the halls, the music from Pixie Hall played in the air, footsteps echoed down the corridors, every manner of creature hurried around they walked, flew, some oozed, others jumped from shadow to shadow, others winked in and out with the beams of light. They were in the air, on the floor, crossed over walls and between the physical and non-physical alike. In the hallway I found myself stopping to look at pictures on the wall, one was a valley with a river running through it. I watched as the picture moved with life, the flowers and the grass moved with the wind the river flowed, even fish could be seen in the river swimming against the current ready to spawn in their home waters, birds made their way to hunt and build their nests. I watched for a moment as the scene played out in front of me. It was a familiar sight. I painted it a few hundred years ago, it is the base of a mountain side that my family owns. We owned the entire southern side from the tip to the river bed. It spans the entire east to western edges. We were given the land along with our grandmother's land in the Native American Lands act of 1971. The U.S. government returned large portions of land back to the indigenous people of Alaska.That was after over a hundred years of stealing our land and resources, oppressing us and forcing their way of life and religion on us. It was a small repayment for what they took from us. It didn't replace all that was taken, our way of life, our peace, and our connection to the world, to the Mother source of the Earth and all she holds. We made trades we didn't know had ramifications we wouldn't understand for generations, I watched it all happen and I was powerless to stop it, or chose to ignore it. I turned around to walk to my room and found the walls shift and bend and stood inside my room, as I turned House closed the door and the world was silent. My mossy floor, my pond, and my bed were all that welcomed me. I sat on a chair and put my head back to rest.

Somewhere in the chambers and rooms life went on. Pogs rolled out of his bed and came out his tree bark door and headed down the stairs. He pulled out his pipe and brought it to his lips. He was playing with it out of habit, he hadn't packed it or lit anything in it. This had just become his habit, when he was thinking or not sure what to do next. It was like people who didn't know what to do with their hands or how to stand when addressing a group. He made his way to the library, he stopped to greet an otter that was carrying a large pale of fish, they talked for a moment about what his plans were for his fish. The otter mentioned making a fire in the great hall to cook them by, he was hosting a card game and wanted to make fish and chips for his friends. As they talked a flash of light twinkled past and a chip and popping could be heard telling them that the great hall was full of beings and the fireplace was already in use. The otter cursed to himself and made way for the front door."Maybe the fire pit is open." He said as he walked away. Pogs continued on his way to the purple door and entered the library. Other than books, the book worms and the walking around the library was empty, no other beings were making use of the books, the scrolls, or the chairs and couches that filled the spaces between the stacks and jars. He walked down the stacks, pensive and reflecting on unknown problems, unknown situations. His little feet and tiny legs padded their way without thought or attention. He was following a humming voice in the back of his mind, he hadn't noticed it at first but as he walked the sound grew louder and louder, but never more than a whisper. The sound clawed at him, bit at him pulling him to where his feet were headed. The woody cap he wore on his head could be seen passing from one aisle to another as he went.

"So what do you three witches want?" Pogs said to the Sisters Three. Addressing them less formally than others would but for a prince it was normal for him to speak plain and what was on his mind. The youngest of the voices spoke, and the chores chimed and switched from one to all then one again, youngest to oldest and back again. "We wanted to remind you of your promise, to remind you of what we showed you, what was and will be shared with you." They said to him, he knew what they were talking about of course, even if he hadn't shared it with the rest of us. The night of the party, the night before his wedding to the Mother of Trees, the weird sisters came to him and the sleeping man. They woke him up, with their weaving showed both of them a future of happiness, of bliss that they would share for all time. Bringing back the family that Pogs had lost, not everyone the way they were, but offspring enough to populate a realm again. Children and grandchildren that could be taught the ways of the 'Shroom Trolls and their history. "I take it the time to pay has come?" Pogs addressed the middle sister who at the moment was the form of ending, of reaping what was sewn. "We only want what is ours, to get back our totem, to be given back our birthright." They said in unison. What I hadn't known, something that none of us knew. The totem, the thing that was theirs by rights was the Quill of Destiny. It wasn't the Gods at all, it had been stolen from them shortly after the universe took shape and form. "It has no power now, the well is dry, there is no ink!" Pogs yelled at them angry at being summoned, angry at being reminded about a debt. In his heart he knew he owed them but after a couple thousand years of thinking he couldn't help but think that the fates had arranged parts of his life, had taken his family from him only to exact a payment. "For a group of sisters that claim to know everything, why haven't you taken it. It was in your care, in that story. Why me?" He asked them, frustration leaking out of his voice and making his body tremble. The youngest of them spoke first,"We can not just take it, we lost it fairly and it has to be given back to us in a debt, we can't just take what is no longer ours." Bridget finished, the version of them that is the mother. "What does that even mean? Of course it's yours, it's your totem. How could it not be yours?" He said through angry clenched teeth. What he didn't seem to understand were some of the rules about expressions. Some true expressions couldn't be taken, they were given or earned. The sisters understood, they used it to help the Gods win a war they were losing, they changed the tides of the battle in their favor by writing more power into them, just long enough to shift the balance in their favor. At that moment their totem was lost to them and fell to Earth. We didn't know about their involvement in the war, we didn't know that the totem was theirs, we only knew that its power was greater than the sisters combined and it ran along similar paths."What about your loom? Isn't it one of your totems, isn't its power like the Quill?" Pogs had regained some of his composure as he talked to Hecate, the youngest again. Bridget then Isis answered in turn." Our loom is a part of us, it is our fourth sister in many ways. The Quill was born as an expression when the universe made us. It's an answer to our power, a counter to our ability. We can not see what it might write but it's ours all the same." Part of the history that he knew but wasn't sharing was so much deeper than we could have understood. It was so much darker than we could understand. The implication of a totem, an expression that the strange triplets couldn't see past, was a game changer in anyone's hands, and a danger in anyone's hands. If I had known about the Quill, about the Inkwell. When I found the pair I brought them home and spent months learning everything I could about them, I tried to learn about the nature of its powers. I realized that without ink it was just a quill, a beautiful quill and the nib looked like silver and never dulled. I tried filling the well with ink made from wood out of a sacred fire, I used squid ink, ink from a merperson's pet, I melted down Phoenix feather and ground the wax mix into Huckleberry wine, Elder tree bark soaked in fey powder and extract of the fire orchid. Nothing made it activate. I used essence after essence and spell after spell nothing worked. If I had known that Pogs knew all along what it was or why it had come to me so much time could have been saved. I could have solved the mystery long ago. So many, "I should have knowns," were in the past, I could only learn to live with them.

As my room rumbled I woke up, I had fallen asleep in my chair. One of my feet fell into the pond and I hadn't noticed, Boom and rumble, Boom and rumble what was going on? I looked around my room, the trees, the grass, the pond, my bed and windows were all fine. Still something was banging with such force that my entire room shook. I called up my essence, casting it out into the room I searched for the problem. My annexed room, the storage for dangerous or powerful things, or both. With the wave of a hand it opened, the chest had been in mid-swing aiming for the locked door. It had been going with such force that fractures covered the stone face inside, sparkles of metals and elements twinkled in the lights, all the elements I extracted and bound together with the deepest and most complete form of my essence. Making it hard and knit together in ways that no black smith could ever achieve by tempering any metal, mainly because this wasn't just metal. It was crystals of different elements knit together down to the atomic levels, made to fit each other piece like a great jigsaw puzzle glued together with a force with a lot of universal force. All tied together in a mystic cosmic string. No one was getting in easley, and the chest had made crumbles on the inside door. "What are you?" I asked the chest. I was afraid, after so many years of facing unexpected situations there was very little I feared. Of course the chest didn't answer me, it just floated out of the anex and landed neatly in front of my feet.

It looked like whatever the big secret was I was about to find out. "House! Seal my room, nothing in or out but my family! Understand?" I yelled into the House. I heard large unseen bolts click into place and the hum of the field around our home constricting into place around my room. At the same time I felt a pressure, it was alive with essence and it pushed hard into, not just my mind but my core, my being. "A feather is my key, its gold will unlock the secret to my door, its nib unlocks what I have to say!" A voice spoke to me, inside of me. It seemed familiar and foreign, like a language composed of language I knew. Considering I spoke all known human language and a number of Fey and creature languages too, that sound was considerable. Still, the cloud of sound made sense to me. "The last of his kind, his hand must work the key, to unlock and let you see!" The voice boomed again. The pressure dissipated just as House twisted the space of our home and my family faded into existence behind me all poised, hands up and essence flowing, some with expressions for fighting and defense. "Stand down, nothing has happened yet." I said to my brothers and my sister. The glow of their power faded slightly but didn't disappear all together. "What happened, when House brought us in there was some kind of resistance, it was a pressure that House had to fold around." Steven explained to me, he was standing at the front of the fighting formation, taking my place as the middle child. Each one of them came in their true forms. Their pale tan skin and blue stripes stretched from top to bottom, their long limbs adding a foot or more to their heights. Each had their snow white hair pulled back in point tails. I looked from them to the chest and the hot glow it had put off was shimmering down back into the box. "The chest was slamming into the door of my anex so hard it cracked the inside of the door. When I opened the seal the chest floated out and settled here." I was explaining what had happened to them using my memory stone to show them the events of the last few minutes.Filling in the parts that involved sound. We stood around and contemplated the events and what to do with the chest now. I understood the implications of what it said. The Quill was the key to figuring out its secrets. Thankfully House had healed and repaired the damage done when the chest came to us. It was easy enough with the help of the beings inside our House each lending a hand in their own unique ways. Some produced wood that House used to fix its floors and joists. The pixies used their relationship with plants to grow flowers that could be used to make pigments used to paint the walls. A giraffe and a polar bear helped paint the walls and drive in nails in the support beams, and Pogs made food for everyone. He spent days making meat pies and salads, cut fruit and pressed juices for all the different creatures. It was a blessing, which made the betrayal by Pogs all the more puzzling when we discovered what he had known. If he knew that secret did he know why his home had lost its will to exist? If I knew at the time I would have brought the truth out of him.

The chest was still and quiet again. Everything returned to normal. Mathew is normally the second one to speak after David spoke up." So are we just going to look at it, watch it? Or should we move it back into brother's safe or leave it there?" He was hopping on the balls of his feet, almost impatient to do something."I came here for some action, it can't all be fun and games." He said smiling. I looked at the funny brothers sideways, and smiled. "Speaking of fun and games." In less than the blink of an eye I had split the distance between myself and my two youngest brothers. WACK! A crack of sound filled the room as my hands hit the back of each of their heads. If I hit them any harder, or if we weren't in our true forms, it would have been damaging but it was just hard enough to make a point."You know what you two did, what that was for." I smiled and stepped out in front of them, crossing my arms. Mathews' expression changed from humor to salome resignation."For now we'll just leave it here. House sealed my room, no one but me inside." I said and flushed a large part of my essence into the floor of my room, feeding House enough power to triple the effects of the spell. I summoned an expression from my pouch, as a spark traveld from my pouch into my hand I was left holding a crook. It was a shepherd's crook and it stood almost seven feet tall. I planted its foot into the ground of my room. A swirl of energy spun around and everything in the area felt a pull inward toward the crook then settled again. "What was that?" Steven said in shock. Larry answered him."It's the shepherd's crook expression. It pulls everything in the area toward it when it feels a threat. Jonesie got it from a hunt for a lost sheep." Larry started to tell the story about when I went into Echinda's cave. One of her many children was hungry and strained into the farm lands below and stole not only a sheep but one of the farmer's children who was tending the flock that night. I couldn't remember his name now, it was so long ago. I went in looking for the lost sheep and the little boy only to find an army of monsters standing in my way and their mother Echidna, the women-vipor who bore all these children to the mighty typhoon. I fought and rescued not only the boy but the sheep. I burned through every spell I could think of and every weapon I had. My goal was not to kill the mighty monsters of old but to subdue them long enough to get the two and make an escape. When all was said and done, I managed to put them all asleep or bound them in place. I grabbed the boy and the sheep, I used the mirror stepping spell and jumped into a puddle of water with them. We plunged out of a river and landed on the rivers bank. I left enough essence behind to burn off the puddle of water behind me to stop anything from following us. When I brought the boy home a crook grew out of the ground. It can't be broken and its ability to draw anything threatening to its bent neck and hold it there is powerful. Now it is my last defense against anything that might break through the charm sealing the room. It had another trick up its staff that no one else but House knew about. When essence was fed into its shaft the staff stimulated Delta and Theta waves causing anything to fall asleep and dream deep, dreaming of whatever will keep them in the dream state. "Let's figure out what is going on. First stop Pogs, Larry, get the Quill and InkWell." I gave instructions to my brothers and my sister. We all turned and left my room.