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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tuxgeo" data-source="post: 6729975" data-attributes="member: 61026">Once inside the ossuary room again, Guran checks around for likely places where he could rest for an hour or so before it would become his duty to stand guard. When Father Spec offers the rope from the spider-room to any of the others who would take it, Guran vocally defers that choice to the rest of them--and most especially does he wait for the halfling barbarian, who actually fought the spider, to express an interest, because Guran remembers how that lad had seemed so determinedly acquisitive in the room with the magically-healing beer; however, Guran wouldn't be at all surprised to see the party's wizard elect to take a longer look at the rope, in the halfling's stead. While such offering and possible taking is going on, Guran sticks the unlit end of his torch into a corner of a shelf in a place where the material sitting on the shelf is able to hold the torch in place, but while still leaving the burning end of the torch sticking out in the air. Guran leaves it there, because he doesn't want to keep holding the torch while he rests and watches. As Father Spec casts the Light cantrip again, Guran watches his actions closely; and he can do so easily, because this time the Father is casting the cantrip directly upon Guran's short sword. Father Spec's gestures of finger and hand and arm are clearly executed with an obvious ease of long practice, and this time they are being performed near enough to Guran for him to see them in their tiniest detail. Those gestures seem to Guran to be subtly different from the gestures he had been taught at the Temple where he grew up. He sees that Spec's fingers move much more freely, more energetically, more sharply, and at the same time more gracefully than the movements of his teacher in his earlier years, when that teacher was already of advanced years even for a dwarf; and whose hands might have been stiff with age. As the Cleric of Travel begins to search the room carefully, Guran selects a spot on the floor with his back to the door, and crouches there in a squatting position, with boots splayed wide and with elbows resting on knees. It's important to him not to kneel when addressing Moradin, for Moradin is a god of both Work and Creation; and since Moradin does not kneel when He works, the act of kneeling while praying to Him is thought to be unseemly, since it could be seen as some kind of rejection of Moradin's ways. Guran lowers his gaze toward the floor in order to open his mind and to remove his thoughts from his immediate surroundings. As he does so, he quietly chants, "My work looms in darkness before me," saying the prayer he was taught as a way to prepare his mind, using those words as an affirmation both of his awareness of new opportunity and of his readiness to learn. He then rehearses the gestures he has just seen Spec perform, trying to mimic them as well as he can while their memory is still fresh in his mind. He repeats the gestures over and over, muttering the dwarven version of the incantation for the Light cantrip while doing so. He soon seems to feel a strange energy flowing throughout his limbs, but no light appears on anything he touches. He concludes based on this that he must be doing something right, but also that it might be better for him to get a good rest before trying that cantrip again. He imagines that the unseen portion of his mind might need slack time to negotiate some newer and diviner terms with his soul, and is waiting only for his conscious mind to get out of the way before it does so. Guran takes the next watch; and the first part of his watch is spent talking with Father Spec and praying with him to Fharlanghn, and learning about the way in which the road is a rope. He's not sure he gets that part; but the Cleric of Travel does seem genuinely happy with that metaphor, so Guran concludes it must have more meaning than is obvious now. Guran tries to think of questions he might ask; but he knows that at least a partial understanding of most subjects is needed in order to formulate questions that open out one's understanding. "A rope doesn't branch," he ventures to suggest. "Could each fork in a road be like a splice in a rope? Or am I dragging the comparison too far in the wrong direction? Is there even such a thing as 'too far?' I know I have seen some folks running their fingers along strings of prayer beads. Is this use of a rope to envision a road a bit like that?"He doesn't get much farther than that in understanding Spec's religion at this time, and decides not to press the subject of his own worship of Moradin, because he thinks it wise to leave off there in order to allow the learned Father to have a good chance to get some sleep. Guran stands guard in the quiet of the ossuary and keeps a wary eye out for mice. In the silence of the chamber of the dead, he reflects on how each body must die, and in that they are all alike; but also how each one dies in a different manner, and in that they are all different. He wonders how many of these skulls are from those who died untimely, in the company of others who had no way to save them. It seems a forlorn imagining: a wounded body getting closer to death, with friends in anguish nearby without the means to halt or reverse the process. He wishes he could find a way, or ways, to keep that from happening near him; and that thought continues to haunt him throughout the remainder of his watch, and into the sleep he takes after the next party member begins to stand guard. As he sleeps, his fingers remember the gestures he had practiced so often tonight. As he sleeps, his mind clears of concerns of the moment, but the thought and the wish that had been haunting him for a couple of hours still do so. His subconscious, at play in renewing his being, does things to his mind he could never conceive, for those things being done work through the ways and the matters from which Guran forms his conceptions. He trusts Moradin to guide all those changes, and that is as well as may be. In the morning, they pray some more. Guran then tries the Light cantrip for the first time after sleeping, trying to cast it on a handaxe; and he finds to his surprise and delight that it actually works this time: the blade of the axe glows! Guran thanks Father Spec for the generous instruction, and says he feels that he could probably do more than that, but is unsure of just what new abilities he might have. He admits that last night he had actually prayed to Moradin, as was his wont, so he can't be sure which god truly guided him; but he is sure Spec's instruction was of benefit, and he would like to know some way to recompense Spec, or his church, or any other for that help as might be thought "fittinghn"; and he would like to be able to ask more questions if he can think of them; but Spec ought to be aware that such thinking might take time, for Guran has often been told that he isn't the sharpest axe in the toolbelt.As an afterthought, Guran takes the no-longer-burning torch down from the shelf where he stuck it (they only last an hour), and re-casts Light upon his armor, thereby extinguishing the light on the axe.</blockquote>

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