Bloodfeathers.

(This is a thread from Mizahar's fantasy role play forum. Why don't you register today? This message is not shown when you are logged in. Come roleplay with us, it's fun!)

Not found on any map, Endrykas is a large migrating tent city wherein the horseclans of Cyphrus gather to trade and exchange information. [Lore]

Moderator: Gossamer

Bloodfeathers.

Postby Allarel on March 30th, 2010, 1:38 am

Season of Spring, Day 20, 510 AV

Before dawn all the world showed misted grey. Perhaps a bell or two remained to ring before Syna’s divine hand would streak the Cyphrus skies with the blush of golden rose that heralded morning. Light clarified, and sliding cat-quiet around the outermost flap of Merran’s pavilion, Allarel felt the dewy warmth of coming sunshine like a rebuke.

Barefoot in tanned calf leggings and a roughspun tunic colored like new cream, she padded through the damp grass where the herds of woolly Zibri and Semes lay drowsing or just stirring awake, mothers prodded insistently by their hungry young ones. In the loose cluster of Emerald pavilions at her back, cookfires were being kindled. First-light hunting parties were testing their spearheads, whetting the edges just once more and stocking their quivers. The greatest number of the Drykas present still dozed in their bedrolls.

Allarel’s sleep had been fleeting, at best, her disquiet stirred, roiling up to the surface, by none other than Merran himself. As most in her adoptive pavilion, her foster-father had largely refrained from speaking of Bingen’s death since she arrived. Oh, he and others offered the appropriate condolences, of course, and she accepted with considerable grace. But she saw how their eyes would stray to the diamond-specked bead that honored the passing of her husband and former Ankal. She saw how they tried not to stare at the crimson and pearly plumage bound to the base of a second new plait.

It would have to have been Merran who broached the subject. She’d not have listened to another. While she crouched restively before the kitchen fire, poking idly at its crumbling fuel of dried Zibri leavings, the old man drew up a low stool and settled heavily beside her. She had risked a sidelong glance and found those keen, pale eyes glittering as if laying claim to all the available light in the cookroom. Watching her, weighing her, not a blink to disrupt the twin gleams in their nests of wrinkles.

“Bloodfeathers,” the Ankal said in his low, husky voice.

She had always fondly recalled that voice as a warm, autumnal rasp, a crackling of fallen leaves whirling about. Those words on his breath caused something to shrivel inside her. Before that moment, she’d not imagined more of her could wither. She realized her hand had gone still, knuckles white on the poker, and forced her grip to relax.

“You know how swiftly news is carried on the Sea,” Merran went on, and she thought she detected a mild note of reproof. “It may not be the name you wanted—”

It isn’t. But she did not interrupt. This man who had taken in and raised her deserved that respect, and a great deal more.

“—and now, so close to their deaths, it may not seem like any kind of honor.” The old man set elbows to his knees, steepled craggy fingers at a silver-stubbled chin. “Time will show you the truth of it. Like it or not, daughter-of-my-heart, you are bound to the web with all your people and you cannot permit a name to stalk you. You must turn and confront it—not to fight, but to face it unafraid. This thing you have done is part of you, as we are all part of one another. We shoulder its weight, too.”

“I am shamed,” she heard herself say in a very, very small voice.

The elderly Ankal sat straighter. “Shamed? No, Allarel. No. You live. For what I’ve been told of the tale, Viratas must have somehow charmed both Dira and Lhex that you still walk among us.” She hazarded a glance up, and the hard look he fixed on her held that gaze where it had risen. “You keep the god’s law, child. He protected life when your mother sacrificed hers to make you safe. You came to us. Muxu found you. You have worked long and hard as a part of this pavilion, and earned yourself the place of wife to an Ankal. You were spared again when the glassbeak took Bingen and his get. How do you explain it?”

Allarel shook her head and threw away the poker, covering her face with her hands. “I cannot know the will of a god,” she all but moaned. “It is not for me to assume Viratas or any other would have a hand in this.”

“Is it not?” Merran’s demeanor sharpened. “You disbelieve your vision, still?”

“Damn it, Father.” She unfolded fluidly from her crouch, a tall, rangy column of tightly-coiled energies. “I don’t know what to believe. I don’t—” Allarel broke off, fidgeted, breathed an explosive sign of frustration. “I don’t want to cross the border again. Not…alone.”

The old man narrowed his gaze. “You are not alone,” he said, suddenly harsh. “It is this boy, alone. And he shall remain alone until you do as you are bid. Blood calls to blood, my beautiful blue girl. I told you you were not shamed—but you shame yourself before me and before the spirits of all who were lost the longer you delay your task. One boy, alive. One girl, alive. This seems happenstance? No.” Merran got up abruptly. “I had believed we raised you to have more courage.”

She stood just where she was as the Ankal went from her, shivering in the dark. In the deepest reaches of night, it was easier to hide. So she fled to her blankets and curled her knees close to her chin.

She had never been a coward, before. The disgrace of it chased off all hope of restful sleep.

Thus, she found herself wading through the ocean of weeds and grasses before sunup, heedless of the dew that soaked leather and night tunic. She was not alone, no, and did not require her eyes to find the one whose very existence had bound itself to her heart and soul. Muxu’s figure materialized like a luminescent shadow amidst the waves of the Sea, at once dark and impossibly bright.

The tall Strider waited for her to come to him, standing with a lazy hip cocked and russet-tipped tail swishing idly. Then her arms were about his neck, her cheek pressed into the musky-clean sleek of his coat, fingertips crawling through the black mane. Muxu’s nostrils flared; he blew a long, soft sigh as one enormous liquid eye rolled askance to seek his rider.

It held a question, but neither of them needed the answer offered aloud.
Image
User avatar
Allarel
Player
 
Posts: 7
Words: 6624
Joined roleplay: March 25th, 2010, 7:06 pm
Location: NYC
Race: Human, Drykas
Character sheet

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests