The Pariah Podcast - Philip 'Norvaljoe' Carroll

The Pariah Podcast, Episode 24: Conclusions

On Midsummer’s morning, after a quick breakfast, Keo returned to the top of the draw, and peered down it into the trees at the far end. "What do you think, Leenie? Should we go down and take a look?" Yes. Keo laughed. "Finally committing yourself, are you?" The draw was steepest at the top and Keo walked sideways down for the first few yards to keep from slipping. Leenie didn't seem to have any problem with footing. The more they progressed, the ground leveled off in its slope and Keo stepped out a little faster, until he neared the edge of the trees. Distance had played with his perception and the trees were farther away, and taller than he had originally thought. Almost anything could be hiding in those trees.

The Pariah Podcast, Episode 23: A Boy and His Companion

Dinner was approaching as Keo and his creature made their way back to the cottage. He checked regularly to see if the pig frog was tiring, but she seemed to have endless endurance. The mess hall closest to his cottage sat immediately off the road Keo travelled. A crowd gathered waiting for the evening meal and Keo tried to skirt widely around them. Something in the milling group of creature handlers caught his eye—orange hair. Hope rose inside him filling a cavity he hadn't realized was empty and he was inescapably drawn toward his old friend. However, he didn't want to get close enough to other people that his creature would cause a distraction. Keo worked his way around the group slowly, trying to get into a position where he could catch Bree’s eye. He caught someone's eye, but it wasn't hers. "Hey, look. It's the pig farmer," Storgent Vangled shouted and strode toward him.

The Pariah Podcast, Episode 22: The Long Expected Day

Keo woke in the midnight darkness. An awful smell filled the room. "Kes," Keo shouted, trying to cover his nose and talk without actually breathing. "Are you sick?" There was no response. Kestrel had left with his creature companion earlier that day, as had everyone in the core. "My egg." Keo sat up and scrambled for a striker to get the tinder going again. He panicked. This smell could only mean that his creature must have died and the shell had finally cracked and leaked the putrid fluid out, releasing the odor. He leapt for the end of the bed, snatched up his hose, and held them across his mouth and nose. He crawled back up the bed toward the table where the lamp waited for a spark. Had rotten liquid leaked out of the bowl and onto the floor? He hoped not. It would be terrible to try to clean up. The striker sprayed sparks onto the tinder and Keo blew. One burst into a small flame which Keo used to light a straw and transfer the fire to the lantern’s wick. Light filled the room and Keo was filled with horror. The upper half of the shell had broken and fallen to the floor leaving the glass bowl filled to the brim with a clear liquid, obviously the source of the smell, but what frightened him most was a large pair of round eyes peering at him from the slime. The eyes were spherical and bloated from death, yet they appeared clear and conscious.

The Pariah Podcast, Episode 21: Insight and Disappointment

Keo made it back to the mess hall as his company marched in from the training ranges. He quietly filled into his place in the core formation and followed the line into the mess hall without making a fuss about any special privileges. Keo sat with some of the trainees from fourth core and said little, taking in what it was like to be an ordinary trainee for the first time. He kept an eye out for Crystal but never saw her enter or exit the mess hall. With his crutch under his arm, he worked his way to the back door and dropped his plate on a table on his way out. Core leader Spinebeck stood in the center of the walkway directly out the door, talking with the core leader of the second core. She looked up as Keo approached and with mild surprise, said, "Oh. Hello, Trainee Noshahne." She turned back to her conversation.

The Pariah Podcast, Episode 20: The New Normal

The three day ride back to the training camp in the wagon felt like a mortal punishment for all the sins of every ancestor going back to the time the old gods ruled the earth. If he could have begged those who had carried him to the lake to find the stretcher and take him up again, he would have. But, he was alone with his jostling pain as the wagon bounced and rocked, pitched and shook. His knee and wrist combined their agony, crossed all his bruises and scrapes in between to jump up and down on the tenderest places on his head. Each night on the road, he asked the healer for more of the mind and body numbing potion, but the healer claimed there was no one to watch him through the night. And patients already on the mend, when using the elixir, were known to wander around in their sleep. He didn't want Keo to fall from the wagon thinking he was merely going for a walk. # No one was happier than Keo to see the camp come into view on their final day of the march. The healer’s wagon was the first of the support wagons behind the training battalion travelling on foot. Propped against the back of the bed in a sitting position, he could lean his head out the side and watch the trainees disperse back to their barracks.