The Ring of Winds, by Sophonisba [crossing challenge]

[saphanibaal.livejournal.com]

-title- The Ring of Winds
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-warnings- Gen. Fusion.
-timeframe- Early in the second season.
-spoilers- Not particularly, not at this date.
-characters- Teyla, Ronon, Sheppard, Rodney, random offplanet locals
-disclaimer- The characters aren't mine; they belong to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, et cetera. The plot isn't mine; it was thought up over a hundred years ago by a man whose parents stuck him with the given names Lyman Frank.
-word count- 3318
-summary- Teyla begins one of the least credible of her post-mission reports.



Teyla Emmagan, daughter of Tagan, folded her hands before her and let her eyes travel between her Lactea-born comrades seated around the briefing table. Most of them were looking at her and at Ronon with imperfectly concealed worry; she would have reassured them, but experience suggested that simple assurances would not be believed without observation to back them.

And in any case, the close attention was fitting for a proper recitative, as the tale of their recent adventures would prove to be. She was quite unreasonably pleased at the thought of being able to recite a narrative as one should be recited, before her new clankind, despite her history of impatience with recitatives in the days before her people fled Athos, much less left the City for the mainland and threw her a bridal-feast.

(On occasion, Teyla considered mentioning that by Athosian reckoning, she had been married into the Atlantean people and the AR-1 "household" specifically for a year and a half now. The moment had never seemed quite apt, though; either there were more urgent matters, or the conversation was on some utterly removed topic, or one or more of the team were not eating at that precise moment.)

"It happened in such and such a manner," she began, "that on the morning of the day before, my team left the City of the Ancestors through the Ring and flew to the world Tamaleh..."


1. The Ring of Winds

"If you knew these cyclones of yours were destroying the Stargate's foundations, why didn't you dig it up and move it into its own underground room, before, oh, say, it got blown away?"

"Move the Ring of the Ancestors?" The grey-haired Tamalenn mayor gapes unattractively.

The children of the Mother-earth truly are children, Teyla reflects, not for the first time. The Ring of the Ancestors lies in a place inconvenient for its use? Think at once of moving it to a more convenient one, without the years it has stood where it now is or the undeniable difficulties of moving it thence checking one's tongue for a moment. And, as with the questions of children still learning the ways of the world, wisdom unlooked-for might well be within; momentous as moving the Ring might be, the advantages of such an action present themselves soon after being seriously considered, not least among them the value of confusing the Wraith.

"These aren't the South Seas, McKay. Wouldn't they be tornadoes? Or twisters?"

"Oh, that's very helpful. Get all twisted up in -- in semantics instead of important things, such as the impossibility of examining a Stargate that isn't there to examine?"

Since gathering for the mission briefing this morning, Teyla had learnt that:

- the Ancestors had built several Rings within this solar system, differentiating between their addresses by some as-yet-unknown mechanism, the very idea of which had ensnared the hearts and souls of half the Atlantean Ring-experts;

- the Ring in orbit had no such mechanism, but as traders from the worlds within the system were known, their own Rings should have the mechanism (unless Ronon's suggestion proved to be true:

"Maybe someone at home opens the door for them coming
back."
"Oh, yes, very logical, except for -- what was it now? -- ah, yes: the fact that wormholes only go one way?"
"Most of the Rings only go one way, but some of them you can step back through while they're still open. Confuses the Wraith."
"Con-- WHAT? -- well, there was that report -- how would that -- hmmm..."

which would, at least, intrigue Dr. McKay almost as much as a deciding mechanism);

- their first-explored world's name of Tamaleh was pleasantly similar to the name of some Earth food, consisting of grain-cake wrapped in leaves and filled with meat -- the latter occasionally flavored with the dreaded citrus, albeit most likely not, despite a claim to the contrary, for the express purpose of denying a delicious and filling meal to brilliant hardworking Canadian wizards.

- the settled part of Tamaleh was (often) overcast and lay amid wide, near-barren plains of a sort unfamiliar to Teyla or to Ronon. Similar plains, many months' journey in extent, lay in Colonel Sheppard's and Dr. McKay's home regions; as the Colonel had explained, "it's all the same plains -- we just drew the border straight west from the one we'd agreed on east of the Plains to the interesting bits west of them." This had spawned an argument over whether or not one of the Earth peoples should have ceded their claim on the lands resembling those in which the Ancestors had preferred to set their Rings, and if so, which one, that had lasted until after the hastily-assembled Tamalenn welcoming celebration had begun;

- the Tamalenn people, despite their disconcerting habit of living in ill-lit underground sealable towns, were fervently, desperately eager to renew trade with anyone. While they claimed their Ring had possessed some sort of "inner ring," the mention of which had lit Dr. McKay's eyes, they also told that the last great windstorm had removed it from the face of the earth.

"Can winds truly have such power?" Teyla asks the other members of her team quietly, while all Tamalenn ears were full of diatribe. "To destroy and throw down, certainly, but to carry off?"

"Saw it on the sea once," Ronon shrugs. "Big column of water, picked up half a ship, the other half broke off before the water-pillar hit the cliffs a half-stayid from where I was."

"There are tornadoes in Florida all the time," Colonel Sheppard offers.

~*~

"In Florida? Didn't you mean the Midwest? Florida's where you get the hurricanes or cyclones or whatnot, how am I supposed to pay attention to what you're saying when I'm on a roll?"

"There are a lot more tornadoes in Florida than there are hurricanes; single worst thing about being assigned to Canaveral. Is that the shuttle -- no, it's a tornado. Is that the -- no, it's another tornado. Ah, man, another tornado just when the sky was clearing up -- oh, wait, that is the shuttle, there it goes... I suppose there are plenty of tornadoes in the Midwest too."

~*~

"They pick up houses and throw them down again, or lift a population of frogs above the clouds and carry them for miles until they rain down onto some unsuspecting town."

"A rain of frogs?" Teyla blinks.

The Colonel nods solemnly, which is less than conducive towards belief.

"The cannissee do as much," one of the Tamalenn women offers, seizing the conversation with a weary flicker of her eyes towards Dr. McKay. Her features and bones suggest that she was once pretty, but age and toil have worn wrinkles, chapped skin, taken color from hair, and scoured all the youth and vibrance from her; she is as grey as the shapeless gown she wore, and it shows all too well. "And as well as destruction and rains of fish, they bring the winds of madness and rains of madness."

"Rains of madness?" Teyla asks politely.

"They're the cannissee rains. What can you expect?"

"Wait, rains of madness?" Dr. McKay interrupts himself. "Do people go mad from the sound of them on the roof and start slicing up the neighbors, or what?"

Before he can go into further detail of "or what," the mayor shakes his head. "The cannissee bears the germs of madness in its wind and water. To breathe or drink it brings visions and madness, erases the line between what-is and what-never-was, and remains with its survivors to catch them as old scars do against the coming rain. It can last for days; this is why we build our towns beneath the ground, rather than our buildings alone."

"Acid rain. Got it," Col. Sheppard nods.

"Acid -- oh, that is bad. That is bad, Sheppard. That is rank."

"'A play on words is the sign of an erudite mind,' isn't that how it goes?"

"Maybe if you're twelve -- "

"What?" Ronon hisses in Teyla's ear.

"I believe 'acid' sounds like some other word in Engaliss," Teyla whispers back. Enough of the Atlanteans speak their birth-tongue among themselves or when forgetting to keep to Ring-speech that she has picked up a working knowledge of the language, although she does not think she knows its word for 'acid.'

"Are they always like this?" the grey woman says bemusedly from Teyla's other side.

"Sometimes they're worse," Ronon tells her over Teyla's head.

Teyla, being a mature and responsible woman who has led her people for years and guided her household thereafter, refrains from striking Ronon (or Sheppard [or McKay]) with her foot or elbow.

"-- And anyway," Dr. McKay once more switches directions, "if the town is shut off from these winds, where do you get the air from? Have people been known to quietly die when the storms go on too long?-- is it stuffy in here?-- oh, god -- "

Two of the Tamalenn elders begin reassuring him, the ghosts of irritation in their flat, drawling, dull voices. Teyla steps forward.

"We have a wide variety of goods and knowledge for trade," she says quietly, drawing the conversation back to its original purpose. "Salt, in grains and larger crystals; water, both salt and fresh; rituals that ward off some diseases and bring better health..." The familiar speech flows off her tongue without overmuch thought, and she watches Colonel Sheppard take up a position ready for any intervention and Ronon make a hand gesture of the sort they have learnt to mean 'going out for a look around, call me if it gets interesting again' with a strong implication of 'you never know, there may be deadly attack voles' before melting out of the crowd.

~*~

"During first contact offworld -- is that safe?"

"Safe enough under the circumstances, and we'd veto it if it
wasn't."

"Often, it is a safer choice than leaving Colonel Sheppard or
Ronon in a place where they might be expected to try to negotiate."

"Teyla!"

~*~
The elders in turn offer products of their tamed burrowing animals, fruits of what quick-growing plants they can harvest, and many, many edible or medicinal molds and fungi, carefully describing the functions and desired value of each one.

"So," a boy of perhaps fifteen annu interrupts at one point, looking at her hopefully, "what sort of hospitality ought we to be offering you if we reach a trade agreement? Food, beds, somebody in the beds... ?"

"Todol!" the grey woman snaps, cuffing his ear. Todol at least is not grey; his hair and eyes are black, his clothes faded nearly white, and there is an eager bounciness to him that reminds Teyla of Aiden Ford.

(But that way lies pain.)

Teyla raises an eyebrow and murmurs that an agreement-in-writing and whatever noninvasive gestures the Tamalenn desire to maintain their own honor will be more that sufficient; they have nearly settled on a trading agreement when a hitherto unexpected public address system sets up an electronic wail, the sound rising and falling as if being taken up by many tongues.

"What's that?" McKay asks sharply, beating Sheppard to it by seconds.

"It is the cyclone warning alarm," an elder with an iron-gray, pointed beard told them.

Sheppard touches his radio too gracefully for it to look hurried, drawl only slightly sharpened as he says, "Ronon? You should get back here."

The radio crackles, hisses, and says in something that is not quite Ronon's voice, "...ppard? ...hear you...inds pick...p."

Dr. McKay is the one whose face blanches, whose eyes widen and mouth twists with sudden worry. The Colonel merely seems to become -- sharper, as he spins on the ball of his left foot, striding back towards the entrance of the tunnels and the doubled doors (one set heavy, an alloy of brazen metal set on pivots, with their own great bars; one set automatic, splitting horizontally before smoothly sliding into the floor and ceiling of the tunnel mouth, the wrought silver of Ancestor-work) whose presence now seems ominous in retrospect, trying once again to raise Ronon.

He may have leapt to a conclusion a little faster, but Teyla still outpaces him on their way back to the doors, neither of them running, the wail of the alarm undulating through the corridors.

"Your friend went outside?" Todol says, bounding alongside them, and then "If he doesn't get back soon, he won't make it in before the doors close."

"Keep them open," Sheppard growls. (Some day, she will accustom herself to using the first of his names in her thoughts and her speech, as she has learned is the custom in his part of his homeworld. But that day is not today, and certainly not when one of hers, one of his, is in danger.)

"We can't," Todol says. "Not the outer ones -- they just close."

Teyla and Sheppard have been working together too long to need to exchange a look before they begin running in earnest, Dr. McKay's harsh panting receding behind them.

Two of the ubiquitous handcart-pullers are at the inner doors when they reach them, heads jerking up in startlement and arms going out to catch the delicately balanced doors. Teyla can hear Ronon's voice again, crackling through her headset, telling them "...past the jump..." before dissolving into a burst of static. Beyond the brazen doors, the outer lock is slowly moving together, and she gathers herself into a leap, flinging herself through the narrowing gap in a twisting motion that lets her see Col. Sheppard's appalled face, his shout of "Teyla!" echoing through both the air and the radio.

And then the lock slams shut with the sort of doom-laden clang that befits the gates of an overlord's fortress in the chants, and Teyla looks around, wind whipping her hair into her face. The sky is a livid green.

"Teyla!" the Colonel shouts again, radio lending his voice a hissing quality and adding a ridiculous amount of crackling.

"I think I see Ronon!" she shouts over the howl -- the roar -- of the rising wind. "We shall take shelter in the puddlejumper!"

And she runs on through the rippling grass, forcing herself to a slower pace the first time it nearly entangles her ankles, heading for the windwracked shape she can see moving on the slope of the opposite down. She takes a weaving path that keeps well clear of the scrubby trees, ducking on one occasion as a branch blows by. Halfway there, the rain begins, driving like hail, like needles.

Ronon says something when she reaches him, leaning ferociously into the rain and wind and letting it take on some of the burden of her weight, but it is lost in the roar.

"The puddlejumper!" Teyla shouts, and then, seeing no comprehension, she grasps his wrist and points with the other hand.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see something. Off to the left -- surely that cannot be smoke, rising from the hill there? But a long finger of cloud, darker than the rain, reaches up to touch the storm's ceiling...

Ronon tugs his wrist out of her grasp, takes hers in his larger hand instead, and starts flat-out running to the little hollow in which Col. Sheppard had set the puddlejumper down, nearly dragging her along.

When they reach it, Ronon slams a fist against the outer door controls and then tosses Teyla in before following himself. If Col. Sheppard were there, he could fly the jumper away, using the strong winds to lift himself and his cargo up and out of this storm. If even Dr. McKay were there, he could have brought up the extra shielding on the puddlejumper, perhaps found some way to make it even heavier on the outside than it truly is.

But all Teyla and Ronon can do is to open the door that Dr. McKay had not bothered to lock, claiming that he might want to send one of them back to retrieve some of their extra supplies. A tree falls onto the front glass of the puddlejumper, cracking it before bouncing off. Through the back, the rain crashes and spatters, wetting nearly half of the rear compartment. The roar is terrible, all-encompassing, as if on the lip of a belching volcano. The puddlejumper shakes, bouncing Ronon off a wall and causing Teyla to sit down very suddenly on the floor.

Then a strange thing happens.

The puddlejumper spins around two or three times and rises slowly in the air. No one is at the seats in the front; none of the devices of the Ancestors is lit. And yet it is, if not as effortlessly smooth as Sheppard's piloting, as gentle an elevation as their other teammate might manage.

It is very dark, and the wind howls horribly, but they are riding quite easily; she has had worse rides from second-time jumper pilots, despite the occasional lurch or spin. She draws her fire-starter from one of her pockets and snaps it to action; Ronon rummages in one of the overhead netting compartments, finding a flashlight and tossing it into her lap. Teyla turns it on.

Then the puddlejumper tilts once more, and Ronon loses his footing, falling out the back.

Teyla's heart is in her mouth for a moment, and then she sees his hand. She shoves her now-quiescent firestarter through a belt loop and crawls over to the back, lit flashlight in hand.

The same pressure of air that has lifted the puddlejumper is keeping Ronon up, so that he can not fall. Teyla wedges the flashlight under one knee, leans out, and helps Ronon draw himself in; there is a dreadful moment when she thinks that his weight will drag her out after him, but then he gets a foot round the other side of the doorway, and can use his leg strength to help pull himself through to the other side.

Then she shuts the door, to avoid any further such accidents.

"We should get out of these," Ronon grunts, peeling off his wet vest.

Teyla nods, then makes a sound of agreement when she realizes that the flashlight might not have given enough light to see her gesture.

The Atlanteans' clothing resists weather somewhat better than the cloth of Athos, and perhaps even than its leather; but this that she wears is still soaked in many places, and she finds on stripping that not even her own halter is dry.

Still, she is naked more swiftly than Ronon, and thus finds herself standing on a bench and removing one of the emergency blankets and a large towel that someone in Atlantis had thought it suitable to stock a puddlejumper with.

Teyla mentally asks the Ancestors to look out for that particular person as she makes use of the towel.

"You may have this blanket," she tells Ronon, who grunts in response. She touches her radio, trying to reach their other teammates, but there is nothing but angry crackling like a faint dull cousin of thundercracks, and she quickly shuts it off.

There is still a faint, dull roar, probably coming through the cracks in the front window -- the viewscreen, perhaps, or the windscreen. Possibly they will be dashed to pieces when the winds of Tamaleh drop them with even less ceremony than that with which they were picked up. Still, there is nothing she can do about it, and so Teyla wraps herself in one of the two remaining emergency blankets and lies down on one of the long benches.

As soon as Ronon has dried himself, he copies her, turning out the flashlight last of all.

In spite of the swaying of the puddlejumper and the uncertainty of their situation, Teyla's eyes drift closed and she finds herself falling asleep.

Comments

[lillian13.livejournal.com]

You must continue this. (Writes the woman who still has all of her Baum "Oz" books.)

[donahermurphy.livejournal.com]

Oh dear lord.

Teyla in Oz? (Or the Pegasus equivalent?)

Now this I need to read.

[rebeccasmask.livejournal.com]

oh, dear. Ronon leaning into the acid rain...

The Ring of Winds by Sophonisba

[sgafan33.livejournal.com]

Very good Teyla voice. Interesting start, at least I assume it's a start. If there's more, you really need to put up a chapter count or a WIP warning. I hope you finish this, it looks like you could have some fun with it.

[springwoof.livejournal.com]

eeee! need MOAR! you can't leave us here...

very exciting! but wanna know what happened...

[ceitie.livejournal.com]

Hah, this is fun! I love the Rodney-Sheppard bickering, and Teyla leaping through the closing doors to get to Ronon, and the two of them being carried away to Oz.