after this and written in response to Rix_scaedu‘s comment.
The science of psychometry was still frowned upon by many of Tekemuzh’s colleagues, he knew. They said it was folly and superstition; they said that it was a misuse of the aether if it worked at all, and certainly it wouldn’t really work. Usually, they stopped after he managed to make his “parlour tricks” reveal something about them they would have rather he hadn’t said.
He could have done without Aetherist Ovanobina calling him in to this particular task, however. Bones upon bones upon bones… and the silver vein that had led the miners to this dig.
“Tell us.” Ovanobina pulled Tekemuzh to the first in a long row of skeletons. “I want to know how they died.”
“Well,” Tekemuzh coughed, “there’s the problem, of course, that if they didn’t die with any major trauma or any surge of aeth…” He trailed off as his fingers brushed the first skeleton. “Oh. Oh by the Three.”
He sat back, trying to keep the contents of his stomach where they belonged. She had bled out, slowly and in pain, next to the still-warm corpse of her sister. She had died, bleeding aether into the very rock. “I think…” Tekemuzh swallowed and tried again. “I think it was a ritual.”
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So, do they still want the silver?
*shudder*
Even if they don’t, there is likely going to be someone of some degree of unscrupulousness who wants the silver, unless there is something screamingly obviously wrong with it to the untrained eye.
This is a good point! Ew…
Or wants it even more for the aether content, as at least in some periods these folks know how to draw that power out of materials.
Ohhhh….. Əəəəəə…. • Tekemuzh swallowed and dried again. -> tried, surely?
Oh, good, anothɚ schwa-phile!
Now that I’ve gotten over the initial shock of reading this, I can ask: wife in Oregon snoring? No, that’s an obvious mistake, and blame it on misuse of Dragon/Nuance dictation software. As Senior Linguist for Dragon Systems all through the 90s and beyond, I knew that wasn’t going to work, But one of my hands is occupied stroking a kitty cat who will protest if I stop.
I meant:
Why “fnarg” and “shnarg”? As you may infer from my signature, I feel some kinship with those words.
So I was doing the Discovery (on sea) series and those were counted and then I had this idea so I needed something else, and then I thought of Moffat calling the newer series of Dr. Who “fnarg…”