Gnome Traps

[Vega]

46th Trial of Ashan during Arc 717

"Do you miss the boat, Arlo?" Vega had not shared a dream with her travelling companion for quite a while, although she no more knew she was doing so now than she had any of the times before. Perhaps this time it was proximity, what with them sharing a room and therefore, her sleeping in a bed just opposite the one he slept in. Or maybe, she didn't dream those sorts of dreams on boats. She'd consider all of that when she woke up, but right now all she wondered was how to make this embroidery more pretty. "I mean, we had some adventures on it, didn't we?"

Pleased, she showed him the fabric she was working on and the very intricate design. "It's for my father. I'm writing him a letter." She was sitting on the top of the cliffside, looking over the ocean where the boat which had brought them here was seen in the distance, leaving Ne'haer behind. Of course, wherever they were it wasn't Ne'haer, but more of a stylized representation of it, mingled in with lots of other things.

"So, we have to catch the statue, and go into the ruins when it's raining?" The trial seemed a little confused in her sleeping head. "Lets get on then. I don't really know a lot about setting traps. Teach me?" Vega considered for a moment as she put away her sewing and then pulled from her pocket a jar with bait in it, some wood and rope and things; all the things that she assumed one needed when one made and laid traps and snares. The impossible size of the pile of things comparative to the size of her pocket simply did not disturb her dreaming mind at all.

"It's a garden gnome," on their way in, they'd seen one and Vega had laughed until tears ran down her face, having never seen one before. "It's fast and it's got big teeth. It might bite your nose if you kiss it. This is what we know. So, how're we going to catch it?"

[Arlo Creede]

"I can't say that I miss it much," Arlo considered after a long, frowning pause while watching the boat that had dropped them off in Ne'haer, disappearing over the horizon. "I didn't mind it the first few trials, or the last one either. The in between ones though. Too many of them for my taste."

It had been some time before he'd wandered into one of Vega's dreams, or her into one of his. Maybe it was the result of sleeping on the ocean, the rise and fall of the vessel or the fact that she'd been ill for much of the voyage. Arlo had wandered the vastness of Emea plenty of times, nightly even, and had written his adventures down in his journal. But this was the first in a while, they'd shared the same dreaming space.

His hat was on his head, but for some reason he was still wearing his bed clothes and his bare feet were dangling over the edge of the cliff where he sat beside her. The young dreamwalker frowned curiously though when she showed him what she was working on. Vega did stitch work? He'd never seen her do it before, but maybe all women did. His mother had, so had every female relation of his that he'd met. At least the older ones.

"It's nice," he said. "Your father will like it." The imagination and the sleeping mind were funny places, especially for those, the vast majority of dreamers, who had no way of sorting out fact and reality from imagination and fiction. He grinned and adjusted the hat on his head. Right, catch the statue, take it to the reasons. But then she mentioned what they were after, and quick as a wink, a deep frown replaced the more amiable expression he'd been wearing.

A garden gnome? Why did it have to be a garden gnome? Sure, it was her dream. But if she was going to go the full distance to objectionable, well, she might as well have gone for clowns and mimes. Things were brightly colored nightmares, that's what. "I can't imagine why anyone would want to go kissing the thing," he muttered, wondering if sometime during her childhood, she'd wandered into a garden and done that very thing.

"We'll have to trap it then won't we?" he said, pulling his feet up, standing and dusting himself off. "We'll need a proper one, and the right kind of bait. I'll show you," Arlo added while watching her pull item after item out of an ordinary canning jar. So, where was this garden then? With a little imagination and a critical eye on their surroundings, a garden appeared just a stone's throw from them.

A proper garden with shade trees and willows, patches of roses, tulips, benches and whatnot. And a little stone path leading through it. Walking that way, he considered what they needed to do. "There's all kinds of traps," he told her. "Large game, small game, traps and snares to catch birds or even fish. For instance, a leg hold trap is usually made out of metal, and snaps shut when an animal steps on it. It catches just one foot or leg usually, and is the kind you want when you're hoping to get a good pelt."

But not for a garden gnome, he didn't think. A snare might be better. So he walked to the edge of the garden and considered what they'd need, then dug though what she'd pulled out of that jar. "First we need the noose material. Since a garden gnome is made of wood, then a coil of wire ought to work just fine." And as it happened, she'd brought some along.

"You know if you need to set a snare and don't have any rope, string or wire, you can always use cattail, dogbane or milkweed to weave a noose," he said, and began scouting out the best place to set the snare. Over there, by the fountain, he thought. Nice and shady, looked like the kind of place a gnome might like to relax. "See there, that sapling? Strong enough to hold the gnome when it's caught, but bendy enough to provide the spring a good snare will need."

So then all they needed to do was tie one end of the wire to the sapling, then carve a couple of sticks to create the hook. Which, he explained, was actually two sticks put together puzzle style then planted in the ground, with one end attached at the noose, and the other end to the sapling. It would keep the sapling bent, for now, until something came along and meddled with the noose, causing the two sticks to come apart and then? "You've got your gnome," Arlo told her.

So when he'd covered up the noose with leaves, he considered the bait. "What do garden gnomes like to eat, do you think?" he asked, and grinned as he pulled several options out of her jar. "Sugar cookies? Saltwater taffy?" Vega's dream, her choice of course, and grinning a little, he waited for her to set the bait before suggesting they both go hide behind the nearest bush or bench, and wait for their gnome to wander along.

[Vega]

"I realised something, you know." Vega was watching the boat, a wistful expression on her face. "I don't dream when I sleep on a ship. Or, I guess, I don't remember dreaming. Weird, isn't it?" She turned to look at him and she shook her head. "You're in your pajamas again, Arlo." She grinned as though it was a common, and funny, happenstance. When he said that her father would like the needlework, she nodded. "My aunt did it a lot. We'd sit and talk, she'd tell stories about my mother and make things like this. I wish I could do it, but I'm all fingers and thumbs."

They were going to capture the statue, which was a garden gnome and she smiled at his expression at the thought of kissing one. "My uncle used to, I told you. When I was a kid, he'd go out catching them and when he reeled one in, he kissed it. Till one bit him. Remember, I told you on the ship?" Of course, that had been about fish rather than garden gnomes, so one could understand his confusion in fairness.

He talked about the kinds of traps and Vega nodded. "When Papa and I were lost in the woods, we came across the carcass of something which had been caught in one of those leg traps. It was cruel," she had no issue, Vega explained, with trapping something for food or to sell the carcass. But that had just been trapped and left there. "I just felt so sorry for it. To die slow like that, it isn't right."

But snares and nooses, traps and springs? Vega nodded along and looked at him with a grin. "Sometimes, you know stuff. It's unnerving, considering you're a boy in pajamas and a hat." As for what gnomes ate, though, Vega frowned at him like he was teasing her. Everyone knew, after all. "Arlo, I made cucumber sandwiches. Don't be silly." She handed him a floral plate on which were a pile of said sandwiches, tiny triangles and no crusts on the bread. Then, though, she leaned over him and grabbed some of the saltwater taffy to chew while they waited. "Sticks to your teeth, though, doesn't it?"

As they watched together a small garden gnome, exactly like the one they'd seen on the way into Ne'haer which had caused her such hilarity came into view. It was exactly the same because, as she'd told him at the time around the sobbing, hiccuping laughter, it was the first one she'd seen. For whatever reason, Vega seemed to have decided that garden gnomes were small little bundles of muttering ill intent and this one wore a deep frown and had an expression which suggested he wanted to go out and torture children.

Muttering and tuttering, the gnome skittered around the garden, moving at a speed which would be impossible in the waking world, leaving behind a trail of dust as it zipped from one place to another. The one place it never went,
though, was anywhere near the snare. Vega grabbed Arlo's arm and nudged him, but said nothing in case it spotted them.

[Arlo Creede]

"I'm more inclined to think you just don't remember," Arlo had said when Vega maintained that she might not have dreamed at all aboard ship. Most mortals, at least as he understood it, dreamed nightly, or as good as. And some hardly remembered their dreams at all. Or only remembered in broken images and sensations. He wouldn't tell her that she was dreaming now anyway. In fact, rules were, he couldn't.

But maybe they just did it to keep their hands busy while their minds were on other things. Women, stitch work. "It's not as bad as all that," he said, referring to her own handiwork. But that was before they'd moved on to trapping or snaring garden gnomes. He remembered after she prodded his memory. Kissing fish, kissing gnomes. But he'd have maintained he'd never considered doing either of those, and couldn't say that he ever would.

As for leg traps, they could be seen as cruel, sure, he agreed. But he'd told her then that mostly, trappers interested in the furs tended to use them most. They weren't thinking of the animal's well being. Instead they were thinking of the trapping method least likely to ruin the most coveted parts of the hide. "Cucumber sandwiches, of course," he said, and grinned when she produced the things. That wasn't food, of course. But it was her dream after all. He'd rather the saltwater taffy, sticky or not.

But for all their efforts, the snare was no use at all. Neither was the bait. Either the gnome had other things on its mind, or it agreed with Arlo's own determination that cucumber sandwiches were not food. "Right," he said, stood up and dusted himself off. "We've seen where he's darting around at any rate." The gnome, meanwhile, had gone off somewhere on his own, and out of sight.

They'd need a different sort of trap then and thinking on it, Arlo pulled two shovels out of the mason jar and handed her one. "We dig a deep hole where he'd tending to go. Then we layer very thing branches over it, then cover those with leaves. He comes along, he treads across, the branches snap and he falls in." Simple enough, and in the blink of an eye they'd dug a hole that was so deep that, well, what came to mind was a very, very deep sinkhole, off outside of Desnind.

And when they'd covered it over sufficiently to camouflage it, they could hide out of sight again, waiting for the gnome to come round again.

[Vega]

"Mmhmm," was the closest approximation to the sound she made when he said that she probably just didn't remember her dreams. She tended to agree, but couldn't quite remember if she'd used to dream when she lived on a ship, rather than just traveled a little on one. Still, the stitching was finished and Vega held it up in her hands, from where the embroidery took flight and was hundreds of butterflies, fluttering around them. One golden one took off and Vega watched it. "That one will talk to my father for me. It's the Queen." There was no doubting that her head was a strange place when she was awake, when Vega was asleep she was prone to mish-mashing things together which just didn't fit.

Leg traps made sense if you were going back to them, was Vega's way of thinking, but seemed rather cruel just left. It was a deep thought for her, a real consideration, and she summed it up in a fairly typical fashion. "No one got no pelt off that, the thing was maggots and bone."

Still, they sat out of sight and ate the saltwater taffy, watching the gnome scuttling around. She frowned, then, thoughtfully. "Arlo, I think I got it wrong. Maybe it was the skeeterwampulus that eats the cucumber sandwiches." She sighed and held up the empty container which had held the saltwater taffy. "Maybe the gnomes like this, after all." Shame though, there was none left.

However, it didn't matter, because he had another idea. A hole? With a grin and a nod, she took the shovel and started to dig. "It looks like your hole. We're very clever to have dug that, you know." And so quickly too. When he explained what they'd do, she grinned at the ingenuity of it, although as they were laying thin twigs over it, she glanced down into the hole in question. "I was really afraid when you fell down there, you know. You shouldn't have done that."

Off again to hide, though and this time, the gnome scooted across at it's impossible speed and then fell down the hole with an almost comical yelling noise. There was even a splash at the end of that long, drawn out cry. Vega looked at Arlo and grinned. "We got him. Well done!" She frowned then, though, as a thought hit her. "What are we going to do with him now? I hope they don't mind us digging holes in their garden. Do you know whose garden it is?"

[Arlo Creede]

"That she is," Arlo had said earlier, when Vega had dubbed the most golden of butterflies, the Queen. She had an active and good imagination already, the young dreamwalker had found. Even if in her dreams, it wasn't always as ordered as when she was awake.

But then she had no ability to lucid dream and in the moment, had no idea that she was dreaming. He was still learning, but wasn't the least surprised at the odd mix of experiences and memories, creeping into her dreams and getting tangled in the process.

It was a shame though, he agreed. After all, they'd pulled any number of cucumber sandwiches out of that jar, and not a skeeterwampulus in sight. And as she'd said, they'd eaten all the taffy. But he'd already declared it was the trap at fault, and so it had happened they'd needed a bigger and better trap. An enormous hole for very little digging, but then that's how dreams worked. It also happened that even for the completely unaware dreamers, sometimes, just sometimes, a bit of clarity slipped through.

"You might've been afraid," he told her. "But you were also brave. Lucky for me you were, or I'd probably still be stuck in the bottom of that hole. Cassion's sinkhole," Arlo added with a wide grin. But it worked. Their giant hole worked. Only because, he suspected, in the fanciful world of Vega's dream, that was the method that had most appealed to her slumbering mind. Nevertheless, when the hole swallowed the gnome, Arlo jumped up, thrust a fist in the air and gave a 'whoop' of his own.

But whose garden? Arlo frowned curiously, then shrugged. "Maybe it's the King's garden, in which case he'll thank us for ridding it of a bothersome gnome." Didn't account for the big hole, but nonetheless, what to do with the gnome now? "We fish him out, that's what," he said, pulling two poles with reels out of the mason jar. All strung with large hooks on, and on the hooks, bits of saltwater taffy...since conveniently he'd found a bit more in the bottom of the jar.

"First to hook the gnome gets bragging rights," he told her, sat down on the edge and dangled his feet over, and cast his line out to the middle of the hole.

[Vega]

"Well, I couldn't leave you down there, you're my friend. So I had to not be afraid." Vega had a fairly simplistic way of looking at the world on occasion. "So, I got angry instead. Mostly at Stu. He was so irritating I wanted to turn his face inside out." She shot Arlo a sudden, almost entirely lucid and as though she were awake grin. "I miss him."

She chuckled, though, when he punched the air and whooped. "You should call that your Arlo Dance of Victory. Good trapping." The King's garden? Vega considered and nodded. "I met a boy once, who told me that he'd met a man who said he was the king of Rynmere. He was selling potions to pirates, though, so I don't think he was. Alright then." Taking hold of the fishing rod, as they had on a boat, she sat cross legged on the floor and lowered her rod into the hole. Sitting opposite him, Vega's dream had the seasons flying past them in trill, light and dark in less than the blink of an eye, although the temperature didn't change at all. "This gnome is taking a long time, isn't it?" It didn't seem to bother her and the speeding clouds were beautiful. "Oh, look! You've got a tickle on there. Good job, really." Vega gave him a stern glare. "We both know you won on the ship, but you pretended not to. It was good food, though, so no complaints."

Of course, the gnome that he reeled in was a different one. This one looked rather like a very caricature garden-gnome version of Cassion, except of course for one detail. The hat it wore was unmistakable. They'd both know those elephant ear flaps anywhere. As Arlo pulled it up, Vega frowned and looked at him. "How are you going to cook it?"

[Arlo Creede]

"I didn't mind them," Arlo said with a noncommittal shrug when Vega mentioned the pair of talkative travelers they'd met last cycle. "I'd have liked them more, if Jeannie hadn't been so busy trying to match me up with her daughter." He'd appeared to make nothing of it at the time. In fact he'd played as ignorant as could be. But he hadn't been, and had known exactly what the woman was up to.

It struck him though that there were strange lapses, where imagination and sleeping fancy overlapped with genuine memory and a sensible expression of it. Flashes of lucidity maybe, but he was too young a dreamwalker himself to know, was it even possible. But nevertheless, king's garden or no, tin crown or gold one, they'd gotten themselves a gnome and now needed to fish him out.

And so they fished, they sat, and they fished some more. It would take as long as Vega willed it to. It was her dream after all. What struck him though, was how she remembered the bet they'd made on the ship so clearly without mixing things up, as he reeled in his catch. "I'd already tasted the stuff the ship's cook turned out of his galley. I wasn't letting him get hold of that snapper."

But then he'd never expected what came up on his hook. She had an imagination, that was for sure. A gnome version of Cassion, wearing a hat like hers? Arlo grinned, removing the thing from his hook, and making a little alteration of his own, just out of her sight. "Well I don't mind cooking it. But maybe you'll be wanting to kiss it first?" he asked.

When he turned it round for her to see, the Cassion gnome was wearing a white tunic with green blazing letters across it. Give us a kiss, Vega? it said. He laughed, and then in the blink of an eye, Arlo was gone from her dream, the gnome dropped in her lap. The way he saw it, even in dreams she'd have punched him, so it was a hasty retreat before she could.

[Mal]

A Hunter's Review

Vega

Story 5/5
Collaboration 5/5
Structure 5/5

15/15 Experience Awarded

Knowledge:
Trap Making: Various Types of Traps
Trap Making: Baiting A Trap
Trap Making: Sapling Snare
Trap Making: Choosing The Right Trap For The Job
Trap Making: Stick-Fashioned Hook
Trap Making: Noose
Trap Making: Pit Trap
Dreamwalking: Dreamers Often Wear What They Sleep In
Sewing: All Fingers And Thumbs
Deception: Not All Are Who They Say They Are
Philosophy: Traps Are Cruel To Animals

Fame:

Devotion:
+5 Jesine (Dream Thread w/ Other)
+3 Jesine (Play a Game of Imagination)

Loot:

Arlo Creede

Story 5/5
Collaboration 5/5
Structure 5/5

15/15 Experience Awarded

Knowledge:
Garden Gnome: Fast, With Big Teeth
Garden Gnome: Might Bight Your Nose
Garden Gnome: Brightly Colored Nightmare
Trap Making: Baiting A Trap
Trap Making: Various Types of Traps
Trap Making: Choosing The Right Trap For The Job
Trap Making: Sapling Snare
Trap Making: Stick-Fashioned Hook
Trap Making: Noose
Trap Making: Pit Trap
Trap Making: Traps In Dreamscapes Work Depending On Imagination
Fishing: Gnomes
Camouflage: Obcuring Pit Trap With Leaves
Teaching: Listing Off Information About A Subject
Teaching: Informing About Traps
Etiquette: A Compliment On Women's Work
Philosophy: Traps For Pelts Can Be Cruel
Dreamwalking: Dreamers Often Wear What They Sleep In
Dreamwalking: Differentiating Who's Dream It Is
Vega: Her Aunt Stitched A Lot
Vega: Lost With Papa And Found A Trapped Carcass
Tactics: Strategic Exit of a Dream

Fame:

Devotion:
+5 Jesine (Dream Thread w/ Other)
+2 Jesine (Keep a Dream Journal)
+3 Jesine (Play a Game of Imagination)
+2 Jesine (Humor Imaginative Ideas)

Loot:
Notes:
Lovely little thread. These two have quite the rapport, I can tell they've been threading together awhile! I awarded what I could. The posts were well-structured and easy to read, and I liked Arlo's almost teasing personality coupled with Vega's serious aloofness.

PM me if I missed something, or if you have any questions or concerns!