Flashback Heaven Hath No Rage...

[Razkar]

It was a dreamless sleep, but not soundless. Whispers were always at the edge of his ears. Whenever he moved his head around in the crushing darkness, though, they skittered away from him, like shadows glimpsed in your peripheral that would vanish the moment you gave them a full glance.

He was scared. And only one whisper was keeping him sane.

Razkar opened his eyes and found that whisper next to him, curled up in a ball and not sleeping. Too concerned, he supposed, and now angry at him, furious, in fact, golden slit eyes fit to burn a hole through his head if they had the power.

Goddess, he was tired... so tired... he blinked and realized he was in Ruwama's hut, not Mayla's. Different bubbling cauldrons, he supposed sleepily. Less bones on the wall...

His eyes rolled over to hers and he flexed his sore muscles, then decided that was a bloody stupid idea and let himself go limp again. The male licked dry lips and before he could even moisten both a water skin was tossed onto his stomach... but not from Eagle.

Another female.

"Take a drink, you bloody thickheaded male," Ruwama said with a snarl, enjoying the sight of Razkar struggling to get the stopper out the skin and taking a few shuddering gulps, "You ever do anything that stupid again, I'll let Mayla take what she fucking likes from you and throw the rest to the jackals."

Tinnok shifted uneasily and before a word could be spoken Ruwama's finger shoots straight up in an irremovable denial.

"Not a word. Not a bloody word, and don't think you're spending another night here, snake..."

The healer stormed out and Razkar winced, not just from the strain of lifting the skin to his mouth. If that was how furious the healer was, Goddess-only-knew what his father would be like. He let his head fall back and struggled to remember... to think and recall...

"I take it..." he said, words coming out as a dry growl until he cleared his throat "... that the ritual finished... as intended?"

Another shift next to him as she got ready to reply. He knew it was poking a tiger, but Razkar couldn't help but grin weakly as he rolled his head to the side, looking over at her.

"Another night, hmm?"

[Tinnok]

It had been a grueling day. She had barely slept, just dozed off slightly against the side of the hut, only to wake as Syna poked out above the trees. She saw the Shorn Skulls clan rise and go about their duties. It was strange watching from the side lines. Even if they had wanted her help the injured abomination would be more of a hindrance than anything, and there was only one being in this camp she cared to help...and he had sliced open his own veins to tame that...that monster.

So she watched instead. She watched children train with wooden weapons, weighted to be the real thing. Saw hunting parties gather and disappear into the shadowed jungle, and was there each time Zek conferred with Ruwama on his son's condition. She didn't eat, and no one tried to make her. If she starved of her own volition, it was no shame on the clan after all. Around midday the grumbling in her stomach grew too great, and she grabbed some fruit and bread, but that was all.

She found a tarantula in the early afternoon. Children were tormenting the thing, who was backed into the corner of a house, legs splayed aggressively. It was the wrong time of day for the poor creature, and so much noise and confusion...Tinnok's throat hurt too much to speak, so instead a guttural growl emerged from her throat, several pairs of eyes whirling to find its owner.

She was weak, but Tinnok could only imagine what a sight her gaunt frame made, wearing next to nothing save her bandages, a strange stick beneath one arm, eyes haloed by strands of loose hair. One of them, a wiry female, looked ready to challenge the snake witch, and Tinnok was sure that many things had already been told to the children about her. Deciding to nip any resistance in the bud, she spent a lot more energy than it was worth to leap forward, hissing loudly and almost...almost, hitting the girl with her cane. Pretending one was insane did a lot for the reactions of anyone, youth especially. The children scattered like stones beneath one's feet, and Tinnok put a hand to her head, as if that would help with the aching that had suddenly begun.

"Sorry beauty..." She said softly, bending like a creaky doll made of wood. She extended a singular finger towards the large spider, black with reddish bands on each joint and a lighter stomach. After a moment of confusion eight legs brought the tarantula forward, a curious appendage making contact with her extended finger, sensitive hairs testing the skin. At first Tinnok was overwhelmed with thoughts of fear and confusion, an inevitability of death that only such short lived creatures could truly appreciate. Tinnok reassured the creature, unnecessarily, that it was not yet his time. Uninterested in such sentiments, though considerably calmer, the tarantula made his way languidly up her arm and to her shoulder, nestling comfortably into some loose bandaging.

It wasn't until evening fell that she couldn't take waiting outside Ruwama's lodge any longer...she had to see him. Her cautious steps did her no credit, she was quiet, but the healer was no fool.

"It is not time to redress your bandages, snake." Tinnok whirled as swiftly as her condition would allow.

"N-no, but I..."

"But you're a fool."

Tinnok had no good response to that. Ruwama spat upon the floor boards. "Your funeral, wench, just be out by morning."

And with that she was gone. Tinnok stood over the Eagle's cot, staring down upon his shadowed form. His breathing was steady...hair neat despite the fact that it couldn't have been his own hands that had braided it so neatly. His body looked frail...like hers, yet there was no reason he wouldn't recover...just like she prayed he always would.

A single scaled hand stretched out, reaching towards his expose chest, fingers hovering just above the skin. Something pulled her forward and pushed her back simultaneously, but after a long moment she was able to snatch her hand away, Ruwama's words still haunting her mind.

So instead she curled up across from the cot and watched him...sleepless, mind drifting in and out of thoughts as the night slowly passed.

So when he shifted, her eyes seemed to regain focus, her gaze searing into him. Ruwama was already there...and frankly her comment seemed light compared to the curses she had been uttering the day before. For the first time she felt strange when the healer left...more vulnerable than even her injuries made her, being alone with the Eagle. She wanted to unleash her wrath upon him...but was simply too tired...

So when he made that comment...she grimaced and gave an exceedingly rude gesture instead of words. "I hope that skull consumes your head the first time you use it...it would be fitting."

Despite the intended venom in her words, they just came off as exhausted...and mostly just relieved. She was glad to see him conscious, especially after all they had been through.

[Razkar]

Razkar only grinned wider as she made an anatomically-impossible gesture. Even a clueless male like him could sense the breathless relief behind her insult, not to mention to weariness that spoke of bells and bells just staring. Watching. Waiting...

"Wonder what I did to get a friend like you." He said, hauling himself with some effort to an upright position. The words were serious but still, that laughing smile on his face. "Something good? Bad? The gods must still be playing my hand..."

Wolf ignored his pathetic attempts at humor when he started moving, of course, but he held a hand up. "Don't worry. No worse than it was when we walked into Mayla's hut. It's just..." he struggled and finally just tapped his head "... all in here. Doing what we were doing, it... scrambles things. Shoves you somewhere else. But once you get your body back in this world, the mind usually follows..."

Razkar swung his legs off the bed and that was where she drew the line. He scowled up at her.

"I need to see what I worked for-"

"And you'll have longer to wait."

A new voice joined the fray and this one brooked no argument. Zek stood there, arms crossed, glowering like some jungle god. Whatever fire stoked in Razkar before Wolf was blown out like a candle before his father.

"B-But-"

"Oh, hush, boy, I'm not debating with you. If you're mother were alive she'd have sliced that witch's ears off my now for putting you at risk."

"I consented to-"

"You are a boy!" Now Zek was roaring, shouting, ranting even, and Wolf dearly wished she was somewhere else. "Meddling with powers that took Mayla a lifetime to learn, let alone master! A thinking skull, Razkar? From a living, thinking, cunning, evil being?! Do you have any idea what you could have called into this village, among your family?!"

Razkar's mouth worked up and down like a fish's, but the words did not come. Goddess, he'd never even thought of that. The danger he had posed to his clan and kin... to Tinnok. His glanced flashed to her but she wisely stayed out of it, knowing better than to get between a father and son.

Finally he hauled himself upright, somewhat happy to see he topped his father by a good few inches (not that it would help, believe me). His braided hair flopped around his shoulders and he ignored it, eyes boring into his Zek's.

"I... I am..."

Say it. Say you were wrong. Say you did not think and in your ignorance you put others in danger. You say it to strangers every day, you cannot say it to your own kin?

"... I knew what I was doing."

Zek just stared in surprise, anger, disbelief... and finally spat a curse and whirled from the hut. Stunned silence, as if the healer's hut itself was anxiously looking for a reason to leave Razkar alone. After a long moment he felt the familiar scratching on his shoulder, soft and...

His fingers found the braid and a strange, eerie but nostalgic half-smile crossed his lips as he stroked it.

"My sister." He said, only partly to Wolf, sitting back down on the bed. "She used to brain my hair... when I was a boy. She said that she didn't want mother and father to cut it, so we had to make it neat." He chuckled and shook his head in the manner of siblings everywhere. "She... She must have done it... while I was asleep."

His face darkened. Doubt and fear in equal measure flitted and warred over his features. Finally a hand that felt like sandpaper to him scrubbed at his unshaven cheeks and chin and he sighed, sounding so much older than he was.

Obsidian eyes peeked over his fingers and regarded Wolf. He seemed captured by her. Anchored, almost, and gave her a weak smile.

"Sometimes... it seems like I go too far," he said, voice soft as if the words were a confession "And it is... I admit, it is something to do with gaining power." His voice hardened fractionally, as if something were teetering beyond them but was being held back. "But what I do, I do for my clan, my people and Myri. Even if that means consorting with powers not easily described or controlled."

Another strange twitch of his lips. "At least I hope so..."

[Tinnok]

Tinnok's eyes widened at the onslaught Zek released upon his son, more fearsome than most any battle. The half breed wondered how many other beings could do such a feat to Razkar, to stop him in his tracks so effectively...few and far between surely. She was curious...she knew little of Razkar's mother, perhaps Aya had told her that she was not in the land of the living, or had been reborn anew, and she wondered what a prideful and fierce warrior she must have been. Surely Razkar shared some features with his father...yet she was sure that if his maternal figure had still been there, those proud lines in his face that made him defend his magic, the way he submitted himself to those above him without sacrificing pride...they were aspects that only a female could show her son.

Tinnok smirked into her arm despite the gravity of the situation, imagining how she would have been received by Eagle's mother...

But that was neither here nor there. Zek stormed out...the Eagle became reflective, and Tinnok watched him with interest. She was glad he did not regret his actions, that would have been worse...so much worse than standing by his medium, even if it was one that sat wrong with the emissary of Caiyha.

But it was good to see a little doubt there. "It is strange...the power of bones. It challenges Dira, Kihala...it is strange, but holds a power of sorts." She shrugged. It is not for me."

Her gaze hardened then. "And you could have waited...Taloba could have waited, until you were better...You push-" She couldn't finish the sentence. He pushed too hard? And where would she be without that inhuman push he seemed to force himself into? Probably dead and rotting in that Priestess's cave with the Tigress and her fang.

"You might do it for Myri, but part of you does it for yourself...and yourself alone, or you would not test your clan this way, and I would know...it is one of the reasons I left mine."

It was different circumstances...but similar as well. She knew she did not belong, and could no longer stand hunting and working in her clan...she still brought them kills of course...fruit and supplies. She was still Tempered Steel, yet...she was selfish, she thought of her own comfort over her clan's, and such comfort she did find in the hollows of the wood.

She leaned back, vaguely wondering what Aya would do if she was in place of the abomination now...would she be enraged? Relieved? Probably best her friend knew little of this particular excursion...

[Razkar]

There were children playing outside, which Razkar knew was strange unto itself. At that time of day, there was a dozen chores to be done, just off the top of his head, and the children had no time for games.

But he knew that sound. It wasn't that long ago it was him out there, teasing the girls with squashed bugs or them teasing him with... well, large and painful sticks, to be frank. The jabber of young Myrians, who had to get everything out now, and then forget it fifteen seconds later.

There was an almost-audible creak was Razkar got to his feet and walked stiffly over to the window, watching the scurrying figures outside... smiling.

When was the last time she had seen him smile like that? She couldn't remember.

"So much has happened since the Storm." He spoke at it nearly surprised her. First smiling, now a voice so soft? "Terrible things... things that... that we don't forget. That take something from us. Before, I would have been happy to wait out my service to Taloba, come home... be with Aya. Maybe that would have been enough for me..."

Goddess... so much had been lost. So much changed. Razkar wondered if this was how those who survived the Days of Fire felt like that... no, it would have been even worse for them. The Storm ravaged them for a day; the Days of Fire, generations. But the knowledge that everything you knew and took for granted had changed... and was revealed as so fragile. So easily swept away...

"Now all I can do is serve." He spoke with resolve now, but it was... hollow. She had heard it before. Doing one's duty because they don't know what else to do. "Help clean up the mess the gods started with that damn Storm. But... But I did this for me. That was my victory. I could sell it for quite a few bikka, but I..."

Razkar sighed and rubbed his face, deciding it was definitely time to shave. Too much maudlin introspection... it did no good. He turned back to the female and rolled his eyes dramatically.

"Males, huh?" Then he chuckled and walked over to her, reaching out to place a hand on her shoulder. "Thank you for staying, Wolf. It means much to me. I hope you have luck with that leAAAARGH!"

Instead of warm flesh, bristling and indignant fur touched the palm of his hand, something fat and warm hissing it's displeasure at him. Razkar jerked his hand away with a start and saw the tarantula there, menacing him on it's back legs, front four raised in challenge. But before he could do something stupid (or smart, depending on your opinion) like kill the little bastard, he saw Wolf shush it softly and shook his head with a wondrous, frustrated smile.

"Do you delight in fraying my nerves, female?"

[Tinnok]

She probably could have warned him, but it was simply too amusing to watch. Besides, she had been slightly taken aback by his change of moods. It was strange, knowing the Eagle was a hardened warrior, yet knowing the toll of this weighed so heavily on him, perhaps more so than others...but then again, the things she had seen with him were events many others didn't have to suffer through. She could not imagine what trials he had gone through on his own as well...

So the tarantula hissed, once again ready to risk life and limb in its own defense, ready for death to take it. Tinnok sent waves of feelings, of soft moist ground and dark spaces where no prying hands could harm the arachnid. The spider slowly moved from shoulder up into her hair, and she could feel its mind slowly calm and enter something like sleep, a little entity seemingly joined to her mind through Nura, at least for the time being.

"If I knew insects and arachnids frightened you so much, I would do this more often, perhaps with one actually poisonous." She smiled serenely...or as serenely as her sore muscles would allow.

"Now..you sit back down. You've lost more blood than is needed. I'll get some food from that bitch of a healer." The word was said with venom, but their was humor in it as well. One of the advantages of not belonging to this clan, and being reviled by it, was that she also didn't have to display the proper niceties.

She rose, slowly to her feet, favoring the crutch as she made her way outdoors and hobbled across the yard. She noticed the children playing, but only saw them as the torturers of the spider lying against her scalp, and nothing else. With a few whispered words, and grunts on her part she procured some food: Strips of marinated meat, rice, and fruit, which she carried most haphazardly back to Ruwama's lodge, nearly dropping both dishes several times, much to the amusement of all who were watching.

"Here." She placed the wooden plate upon his bed and returned to her seated position, picking at the fruit slowly.

"When do you return to Taloba?" She knew when he left, she had to as well, there was no other choice. The Eagle's affection for her, whatever effect it seemed to have on his clan, would evaporate the second he left the premises. Not that Wolf wanted to stay any longer than she needed to, but her body was weak, and would not recover for some time...and perhaps some parts of it, never fully recover...What a strange week it had been.

[Razkar]

Eagle bristled, unknowingly mimicking the indignity of the tarantula when Wolf suggested he was afraid of it. Well, he wasn't, he was just... not entirely un-afraid. But before he got he chance she was already snapping orders off at him, eight-legged friend probably dozing under a blanket of braid as she stood to get him food.

Razkar just sat gaping at the door for a few moments. A female willing to get a male food, that was...

He chuckled and settled into his bed, a smug little glimmer in his smile making his wounds a little more bearable

That's progress. Enjoy it, you dumb male.

She returned soon after, bearing two very different plates. One loaded with fruit, the other with meat, rice and vegetables. Razkar cocked his head to one side and wondered if it was something to do with her mark from Caiyha. If so, he sort of understood. It was one thing to swear off meat because you thought killing was cruel, even if he thought such thinking was stupid.

However, when you are intimately aware of the pain and agony behind the death and butchering of that succulent meat, well... it changes your perception somewhat.

Still, Eagle found himself unconsciously checking for hairy legs before he started eating, and then she asked the question. The only relevant question, actually... and there was only one logical answer to his mind.

"When you're ready to go." Her brow furrowed and he explained around a mouthful of broiled deer. "That thing we killed was probably an exception, but I'm not having you trekking through the jungle for three days back to Taloba by yourself. It's too dangerous. And... well, that's the only reason, actually. I won't be fit to move for another day, maybe two... and I'm not putting that helm on until we're away from my clan lands."

There was a short but uncomfortably pregnant silence between them. When Eagle looked up from his plate, he saw her concerned gaze boring into him.

"You think I'm not going to use it, after expending so much of myself to craft that tool? I just want to get away from my clan first. My father was right about that, at least..."

He chewed more thoughtfully and sat up a little straighter, despite her objecting glare. The male just rolled his eyes and finished his plate, all but licking his fingers clean.

"Thank you, Wolf." Razkar said with a contented sigh, eyes suddenly heavy after a fine meal and more thinking that he would have liked. "Now unless you're going to supply some body heat while I sleep, I'll ask you to get your head down in your own-"

He giggled (yes, actually giggled), as something hard was hurled at his head, hand moving too slow to stop it. But Razkar still laughed. It was good to be alive, and even better to be with a friend.

[Tinnok]

Tinnok chewed thoughtfully on a bit of mango, letting it slide slowly down her stomach. When it hit the dissolving acids there, however, her hunger returned with gusto. She leaned forward and snatched one of the meat strips off of Razkar's plate and bit into it, savoring the marinated juices in her mouth before chewing and swallowing the thing, leaning back afterwards.

If the skull was going to be potentially dangerous, what in Dira's name was the point of even making it? Was he saying it could take his head off? The half breed snorted derisively, and the look Eagle gave her could have melted stone as he explained his father was right. Well...he shouldn't have bloody done it in the first place, aye? Messed with such an unpredictable creature like that.

She said nothing, however. This was his life, his magic...for after this night she was not likely to try malediction herself. So when he spoke, and after she threw the rock, the plate of fruit demolished, she rose shakily to her feet, freeing the tarantula from her curls and letting it rest in the cup of her hand. He could be free now to go back into the jungle without fear of children's crushing feet or sticks.

"Sweet dreams, Eagle." She said slowly, without as much sarcasm as that comment should have held. She knew her own dreams...and also knew his couldn't be much different.

She stepped slowly out into the darkness, and made her way to the small corner cot in the hut that wasn't really a hut, after depositing the tarantula in the grass, and not long after collapsing into her cot.

She did not fall asleep though...at least not yet. Her mind drifted to the eyes of the clan members, the feel of falling through the trees, the powerful grasp of the arm she could now call her own...Eagle falling to the ground like a doll, Mayla's cold and calculating eyes.

She just wanted to go back to her hut...things were so much less confusing out there, where plants and animals could be easily read. Why had she gotten caught up in the affairs of Myrians?

It was the first time, she would realize later, that she had truly seen herself as outside of her own race.

[Razkar]

Two days passed in a pleasant but inexorable blur for Razkar. Still healing and with nothing else to do with his time, he laid in bed and entertained his younger siblings for most of it. At night he would hobble out for dinner, strides gaining strength with each meal, until on the night before, his stride was almost as it had been before the hunt.

He sniffed the air. His gaze swept the assembled faces. His family, his clan, his fang... Wolf. They all knew what would be said.

"My strength has returned," he said before the bonfire, words carrying across the assembled Skulls, "And so, my comrades and I will return from Taloba. We will carry word that the lands of the Shorn Skulls are secure-" a burst of approval "-that her warriors are fierce as ever-" and even greater roar, even Draksyl joining in with it "-and that the enemy we faced... is naught but digesting meat, pilled blood... and bleached bone..."

With those final words he lifted the rune-decked skull over his head with both hands, bellowing a wordless cry to the darkened canopy above them all. On every side Shorn Skulls - male, female, young, old - rose and beat their chests, waved weapons in the air, screamed and shouted their pride.

Then he sat, and he ate, and he looked no more upon that skull... but it seemed to look at him.

Razkar stymied the thought until the next morning, when he woke early for a change, and a welcome one. Too many days he'd spent waking late, when the sun was already lighting the entire canopy. Not a good habit to get into, when you're a professional soldier. That morning, however, his body stirred when the first faint wisps of day were creeping through the leaves, and Razkar smiled.

About time...

He dressed, he packed, and he did it all by himself. No more assistance from Ruwama needed. He bound the skull with vines and secured it almost like a backpack, making him look like some kind of deformed tortoise.

The young male smiled, appreciating the irony, and swept open the door...

"... oh. Not the only one up early, I see."

His entire fang chuckled smugly, arrayed before him and ready to move. Wolf stood to the side as well, looking isolated as usual... aside from the small furry mound by her foot, gently caressing her big toe as if begging her not to go.

Razkar crushed a small smile and cleared his throat, directing her gaze down before turning to his men.

"Should be an easy journey back, but keep your eyes open on the off-chance, understood?" Of course they did, and said so. "Good. Standard march formation, four-four-two. Xarel, Zuran, you're on point. Oxil, you take the rear four."

"What about the halfbreed?"

Wolf's heart skipped a beat as she thought the male would over-react, but aside from a subtle tensing of his jaw, there was nothing. He looked over to the female that spoke and then nodded at Tinnok.

"She'll travel with us until we pass her home, then she'll leave. Anyone have issue with that?"

Ah, but there was an edge to that, and darting eyes aside, no-one had the balls to voice it. Razkar nodded, satisfied... and turned to the other figure waiting there.

"Father."

"Son."

A pause. Pregnant as a Tskanna a day before birth. Two males who just would not give an inch to each other, both convinced they are right and the other is wrong... or maybe not... but enough for their lips to stay pressed together. Razkar didn't break the stare... for the first half a chime. Then he looked away and his fang took the hint, filing away to the edge of the village to await their commander.

"You fought bravely son." Zek finally conceded, the words coming out quickly but sincerely. "Your mother would have been proud. Of the fight."

Razkar smiled tightly, noting the hasty addendum to the compliment. Everything else he did, she would have been less proud of, but...

"Yes. I think you're right."

Zek nodded back, and sighed when he realized that was all he'd get from his son. He sighed again and shook his head, rubbing temples that had more wrinkles on them than he was happy with.

"Stubborn as her, too, boy."

"My father, as well."

A smile. An actual smile, and Razkar had caused it, and that made all the tension worthwhile. He mirrored it and the two males embraced briefly, but firmly, father whispering to son.

"I love you, boy. Stay alive out there."

"Keep them safe, father."

"I will."

Wolf did not like hanging around Razkar's fang. Typical narrow-minded Myrians glaring or muttering in her direction, she would have more fun prodding a viper nest. But she knew better than to interfere or goggle at father and son, stepping away with the rest, until her male came walking back.

Not. Not hers. Her friend.

Razkar didn't see the flicker that crossed her face as he returned and put it down to tension, hanging around his command. Well, that he could understand. Bow in hand, skull bobbing slightly at his back, he gave the hand signal for "move out", and as one unit, they did just that.

Xarel and Zuran took the lead, as instructed, bounding off with bows drawn past the treeline, staying out of eye sight but within easy bird call range. The others split into two groups of four, Oxil in nominal charge of one as Razkar's second-in-command, Razkar commanding the other, leading them.

Wolf marched just behind him. They marched until the sounds of the village had faded away, screeching children and hammering wood. The smell of cooking fires and fresh blood. And as they moved, he felt himself... smiling. He was no witch of the wild, but there was more noise now. More... vibrancy.

The jungle seemed to be thanking them, if it were even capable of such a thing.

But when he knew they were beyond the lands of his clan, Razkar turned to Wolf, voice grave, and spoke low enough for only the two of them to hear the words.

"When we're halfway back to Taloba, I will don the helm, and see what my blood and will purchased." He heard her braids snap as her head whirled, but kept talking. "Come join me if you wish. Or not. Either way, I must know..."

[Tinnok]

His were pleasant, hers were the same. Not because of the company of course, well at least not Myrian company. She woke the next day to find the tarantula upon her chest, and smiled, recognizing its thought pattern as the one from before. So the two spent the rest of her time their together. When she was not in bed the half breed managed to limp out into the woodlands to sit beneath the large trees, calming her mind by sifting into their slow and calming system of nutrient gain. The birds sang once more in the trees, and she heard the distant howls of howlers monkey troops moving back into their once forsaken territory.

An agouti stumbled across her in the late afternoon, large eyes taking the witch in, but it did not stop for communication, merely continued onward. She was glad to see how swiftly the life returned...much more quickly than the life through her own sore body.

But when the Eagle was ready to move...she was, more or less, as well.

She did not cheer as they did, but this was not her clan, and the abomination had dropped all pretense of respect for them as well. She ate her fill of the supper and left with the tarantula perched upon her shoulder. She slept a dreamless sleep, and woke slowly and immediately before Syna claimed her reign in Leth's skies.

She methodically gathered her weapons. Much of the bandaging was still there, but her clothing slid easily over it, and the weight of her dagger belt felt comfortable and right there upon her hips. Longbow was slung upon her back, quiver aligned with it, and the Dhani arm was attached to the quiver, hanging like a strange souvenir upon her back.

She stood apart from the others, as was her place, as she was comfortable, and smiled as the Eagle joined them, slipping into his leadership role as comfortably as a worn glove. She could care less about the comment, and was glad when they began moving and the moment was put behind them, ears catching the melodies of a tanager in the trees as if guiding them home.

But for her...as soon as the village disappeared, she already was. She fell behind the procession somewhat to deposit her temporary arachnid friend in a dark hollow of a small tree, she knew that one of the legs protruding up in the air could not have been a wave goodbye, but it still made her smile as she saw it crawl into the depths of the burrow.

Just as she caught up she noticed Eagle draw in line with her, and golden eyes narrowed as his voice became hushed. Tinnok only nodded. Dira be damned if she wasn't going to be there when it happened. She would break that skull into shards upon his own skull if need be. Her response was silence, however, and so she continued taking up the rear, ears listening to the wondrous sounds of life returning to the Shorn Skull's corner of the world.