vignette: tiq'barang detective fragment

Veronica Bunsong-Bu’an, the detective-in-charge, shook her head and finished taking the last of the witnesses’ statements. She had been summoned only minutes after the murder and had lost no time in finding her way to the site of the crime. She had looked carefully at the remains of Diomedes Senal and ascertained that he was dead before he struck the ground, his head cruelly twisted from back to front.

The Tiq’Barang stretched to her full height and fought off her fatigue. Like most of her race she could endure more than men, but when the Tiq’Barang tired, they needed to rest longer than anyone, and Veronica had returned from an especially long investigation in the Ispancialo garrisons in the dark north. She absentmindedly rubbed the end of her equine snout and took some time to review what she had already noted.

To the eyes of any man, Veronica Bunsong-Bu’an was a creature of contrasts. She was indisputably beautiful, but her intimidating size and scale dwarfed the tallest of men. She stood almost ten feet tall and the cloak of the guardia civil did little to hide her massive shoulders, yet her eyes, a pale liquid grey, betrayed an air of kindness, and her voice was never raised above the barest of whispers.

She was Tiq’Barang, half-horse, half-human, and born in a distant province. Unlike most of her kin, she was raised in the Faith of the Ispancialo and rose quietly up the ranks of the clergy. Her inquisitive mind and natural powers of observation and deduction earned her the position of ecclesiastical detective, responsibly handling criminal matters that the Church preferred to remain secret, earning a reputation for solving the impossible, until that particular night when she had to make a painful choice between loyalty and truth, and chose truth.

The guardia civil were more than happy to catch her at the terminus of her fall from grace, and added her to their ranks with understated pride, for already she was known to possess one of the finest minds in all of Hinirang.

A mind that was perplexed by current situation that her notes did nothing to illuminate.