Completed You and I [Razkar]

[Tinnok]

She spirnted through the jungle, thorns and branches grasping at her from all sides. Her hands stretched outward, hands groping for branches to swing herself over large roots, tumbling to the ground when her feet couldn't grasp the ground quickly enough for her liking.

But the cat had four legs and she only had two.

"Wait!" She called even as Eagle did. As if the cat would listen even if it understood her. Goddess she was a fool.

She could hear the cat thrashing through the branches, stealth forgotten as it needed to escape with its life. Her feet pounded against the earth, wondering if she was losing ground or gaining it.

"Petching shyke." She cursed to herself. Several chimes of running and suddenly she no longer heard the sound of the jaguar. It could be gone, or perhaps simply hiding in some dark patch of foliage. She slowed her pace to a jog, attempting to hear the cat. Not even the cracking of a stray leaf seemed to reveal it, however.

"SHYKE!"

Tinnok fell to her knees, muttering softly. "This is your test, mother? To show me my own pride? To tell me I cannot walk both roads unscathed I see."

She heard Razkar's heavy breathing behind her as he tried to collect herself, the half breeds fingers were entrenched in the soft soil around her. "Perhaps you were right..." Her voice was louder now as she rose from the ground.

She rubbed her face. She thought herself so wise, so strong for Caiyha's gift, yet she was still just a child, not even an adult by Myrian standards, and it seemed she understood so little about it all. She turned and glanced at a rather weary and confused looked Eagle, then gave a shrug, heading at a much more moderated pace back towards their kill.

"Have you ever considered hunting....cubs?" The question was half joke, half proposition. Already her mind was working out the possibilities. It would be too dark to find them tonight, but surely the creatures would start mewling with enough hunger in their bellies. In the daytime they might even be tempted to being wandering around. If she could follow a set of jaguar tracks deeper into the jungle, perhaps she could find the babes to relocate them...

Tinnok rubbed her face. "I saw the kittens...when I went to finish her off. She has a litter of four in some little cranny in the jungle."

It was foolish, but she had to do it. He didn't have to come of course, she knew his dour opinion of her Mother after the events of the Djed storm.

[Razkar]

Goddess, but she was fast. As much as Razkar strained and leaped and vaulted over dead trees in his path, Wolf was only ever a shadow flitting just out of his view whenever he neared her. Finally she vanished completely and Razkar gritted his teeth, plunging onward, following only distant sounds and still-swaying trees, until...

"Perhaps you were right..."

She turned and found him breathing heavy, bow almost trembling in his hand, sweat pouring down his near-naked body. He cocked his head to one side at her strange words, wondering who she was talking to.

"Wh... What are-"

But then she was gone, rushing back the way they'd come, some bright purpose behind her golden eyes. Razkar growled skywards and flung his tired body around, jogging back across sweat-strewn ground. Finally they returned to the still, cooling body of their kill, and Razkar unsheathed his gladius. As fine and honed a weapon as any he had right now.

"Have you ever considered hunting....cubs?"

Razkar chuckled with his forearms slick with blood, calmly going about his work with the jaguar pelt. He turned it onto its back and slit down its stomach. Carefully, slowly... patience, that was what his parents taught him about skinning an animal. Too slow and the cut would be ragged; too fast and the pelt would be ruined. Once the slit was made from chin to testicles, he switched to his dagger, working under the pelt, severing fat and tendons of muscle from clinging to the underside of the fur.

But eventually, the smile faded... he looked up into her earnest eyes.

"... you're not joking, are you?"

"I saw the kittens...when I went to finish her off. She has a litter of four in some little cranny in the jungle."

Razkar's eyes narrowed slightly, an expression he didn't usually direct her way. Suspicion. Disbelief. He wiped his hands as best he could, dedicating his attention in a new direction.

"Saw? In the flesh?" Her face twitched and she looked away. "No... not in the chase... you saw them... through your mark, didn't you?" Silence answered him, but it was an answer, and he sighed, looking back to his dagger and the desiccated carcass. "Tis the way of the jungle, Tinnok. The strong prey on the weak, and it is not always those who die that day who suffer."

With a few more practiced moves the pelt was flapping free in the light, welcome breeze that whipped through the humid air. Blood and viscera dripped from it but he threw it over his shoulder anyway. It would need to dry, but they had not the time. They would be moving soon...

Razkar sighed. Yes. And not back the way we came.

"You are resolved to this?" A stupid question, he realized with but a glance at her face. "This errand is for Caiyha, is it not? She that..."

Once again, the stinging, accusatory words did not come. Even now as he felt the full vent of his anger and abandonment mass in his tongue... looking at her... his friend... he could not bring them forth. The male sighed again and shook his head, hacking off some choice chunks of meat, wrapping them in leaves. The claws came next; sharp points sure to be valuable in some way.

Rising to his feet, Eagle retrieved his arrow, returned it to his quiver and regarded Wolf.

"Only for you would I do this, Wolf... well... perhaps one other... where is the trail we follow?"

[Tinnok]

She watched him skin the hide, and herself set about taking off strips of meat. The slant of sunlight was growing lower in th sky. His stance suggested carrying on, while Tinnok's showed a quite stationary position. her body falling wearily to the ground, a giant fern allowing her to lay out the strips of meat and muscle she pulled off of the jaguar's bones.

"She that what?" Tinnok said, a trace of indignation in her tone.

She licked some blood off of her fingers, yellow eyes peering up at him. "We cannot track the jaguar in the night, and we have too heavy of a load to carry, besides. So sit down, Eagle, let this burden off of your chest. Tell me how my mother has betrayed the Myrian people in the storm." Despite the sarcasm dripping off of her tongue, she did not appear particularly upset...more, resigned.

She had seen a new life breathed into the jungle, he had seen the destructon of hundreds of years with one moment of plant over growth...two pairs of eyes witnessing different events was not something for her to be angry...the question was: was he?

As he stood, deliberating with the bloody pelt heaved over his back, Tinnok began rummaging around the clearing, gathering small leaves, sticks, and foliage. They had need of a small fire to cook the meat of the great beast they had felled. She collected her arrow and returned it to her quiver, listening intently for the words she knew were to come.

[Razkar]

Sarcasm coated her words and black eyes flashed to her in the half-light of the jungle floor. His hand raised an inch to point at her as he spoke, but Razkar stilled the impulse. Raised weapons among Myrians promised blood, and he was not s angered by Wolf's faith that he wished that upon her.

Or yourself, remember?

"You believe what you believe and I cannot change that," he bit out the words as he finished arranging the pelt, stripping short, sharp branches as skewers for their meat, "But don't belittle what happened."

Simple words harshly spoken, but just the prelude, as they both knew. A silence crackling with passionate anger and the sting of betrayal followed, and as the sun set and light died, it seemed to only grow worse. Tinnok lit the fire with sparks from her blade and soon the meat was sizzling merrily...

If only we were the same. If only those days had maintained.

"I don't know what caused that blasted Storm," Razkar finally said, eyes focused and glaring at the fire, "But what I do know is that for centuries, we have worshiped and respected Caiyha. More than Navre, Makutski, Syna, Leth, Kihala... only Dira and the Goddess-Queen herself were loved more and what was our reward when we needed it most?"

His voice rose with every word it seemed, and when his eyes finally flashed to hers over the flames, they were wide and accusing.

"Chaos. Animals turning against us by the thousand. Trails destroyed. Trees, shrubs, vines coming alive and choking our people." His hand stabbed out but only to turn a burning side of jaguar. "I know she is the Green Goddess, and she favors no-one... but just once... when we needed it, and..."

The male shook his head and kept up his sullen staring. He was tired of the excuses and proselytizing of the priests, who said that the gods of the jungle would never abandon them. But looking around him, how could he not think that? If the gods had the power to save their people, their followers, those that pledged life and flesh and works to them, and they didn't... what was good about them?

"It was a betrayal." Goddess, so much subdued hatred in his voice, and Wolf almost winced. "And your mother was a Myrian female, just like mine and-"

Those golden eyes suddenly became like pools of lava and Razkar bit down hard on his tongue. Ah... gods! Just like him to let his anger take him to unwise places. Speaking of Tinnok's mother would never end well, for it would inevitably conjure images of hate and abandonment, not to mention her father-

"... let's just eat."

He finally mumbled, feeling drained already, and that aching, burning anger had not lessened. They feasted under the canopy and slept on the mossy roots of trees, as they had done for years... yet he felt like he was behind enemy lines now. In hostile territory. Behind his anger, as he felt his eyes grow heavy, was not mere childish rage... but a sorrow.

We loved you, Caiyha... and when we cried out for you... you turned your face from us...

[Tinnok]

She knew the words would hurt and sting. Not deeper than blades, but just as harmful, without physical signs to display.

She tried to maintain her calm. He saw the events that had happened, creatures had rebelled, the plant life had destroyed much in its growth.

But he saw his mistake as soon as he cast it. The veneer of calm she had been able to maintain vanished in an instant.

She was no longer hungry.

She took a quick sip of her water skin. Her mouth opened, but she wasn't sure what she would say. Would she scream and yell at him, make him regret spilling out his emotions? Chide him for bringing up her biological mother, despite the fact that the Goddess of Flora and Fauna had suckled her?

"She did not do this." Every word hung heavy, enunciated to the fullest.

It was all she could manage. She had no reason, no proof. But despite the fact that the half breed had been proven wrong time and time again that life never went her way, that it was anything but fair or just...There would be something too cruel to know her mother had been the reason behind it all.

"This is isn't funny..." She began...but a chuckle couldn't help but escape her throat.

"When they all vanished...the blockade around Zinrah, all the pure bloods disappearing...I couldn't help but thank the Gods...because...if I wasn't born an abomination...I'd be gone too. Wherever the petch they went...It's the only time where I have been actually grateful for what I am."

She paused, brow furrowing. "That? That wasn't Caiyha's doing. The light that blinded the guards on the walls? That wasn't hers either. Petch if you want someone to blame blame those Gods the barbarians revere, it was a petching storm after all." Her tone did not hold any angry, simply exhaustion. She took a longer swig of the skin and threw it at him, aiming for his stomach.

"I need to piss, make sure the fire doesn't burn down the jungle." She rose slowly, wandering off into the jungle, squatting amidst the brush to relieve herself when she was a short distance from camp.

One her way back her foot sank into something squishy. The half breed paused, rubbing whatever it was from the sole of her foot onto her finger, and balking as she brought it to her nose, wiping it on a fern.

Well....at least tomorrow they'd have a good start...

[Razkar]

Fitful and inescapable dreams haunted the male that night. Images of the Blockade he was never at, the carnage reaped first without blood (by the Storm), and then with an ocean of it (by the emerging Dhani). Memories of Taloba tearing itself apart under a sky gone mad with color, rampaging Tskanna, staggering and white-eyed Myrians, the jungle seething beyond her walls like an unstoppable army...

When his eyes snapped open, the images stayed in Razkar's eyes. For a blink... then two... enough time for him to think himself trapped in that world of shades and nightmares-

Then he saw Tinnok squatting across from him, peering in confusion, breakfast roasting over the fresh flames.

The male heaved himself upright with a groan, spending a few chimes stretching and coaxing int life sore muscles. Wolf had already packed up their things, even the pelt was rolled up and across her back.

"You should have woken me up. Not right, a female doing all the packing alone." Her eyes searched his with a cocked eyebrow and he rolled his own. "I'm serious, damn you! I do have some manners to me..."

An enigmatic "hmmm" answered him and Razkar concentrated on getting dressed. Syna had risen above them and he guessed it was close to mid-morning... which made him grunt softly. Too long to have left their pursuit? He didn't know. Wolf certainly had the skills and... gifts, to track down prey, but would the trail be cold?

And it's not prey anymore, is it? It's a... what? A rescue mission?

Razkar shook his head as the last of his sparse belongings were stuck into his belt or hefted over his shoulder, camp now stripped and dead save for their sizzling breakfast and a fire soon to be stamped out. He was halfway through the scorching jaguar leg when he spoke next.

"Y'know... I've been thinking." A cough that sounded very close to "uh-oh" made him glare but he continued gamely. "... as I was saying... thinking, that we might get that other jaguar when we find the cubs. She'll be out on the hunt still... bunch of unprotected cubs would be to good to turn up. Perhaps they can be our bait... if we find that cranny you mentioned."

He left it unsaid what a big "if" that would be, standing ready before her, sounds of the waking jungle cawing and clicking and chirping around them. He felt it... wrong, to mention their words last night. But that was yet another reason Eagle cared so for his Wolf.

Sometimes she knew when to speak, when to stay silent... and when to forget things every happened.

"But you're the expert out here... what say you?"

[Tinnok]

Tinnok rubbed the sleep from her eyes as Razkar spoke, ignoring his bit about letting a female pack up camp. He knew she did not feel the same way as her half brethren about the roles of males and females...strange that he would still cling to it even hear.

She wolfed down a chunk of meat, thinking on the fact that the muscles was a little too rich to be good. But it filled her stomach, and they had fetched a good pelt out of the deal. She had sliced up and wrapped in rubber leaves all the meat they would be able to carry with them. The fangs she put in a pouch, for later, and one eye she ate, offering the other to Eagle. She did not believe in the superstitions of some of the older clans, but the idea of the eyes of such a vicious beast going to waste did not set right with her either. She would have liked the skull, but she had nothing to do with it, and little for the rest of the bones, though she spent a few chimes taking off the claws as wells, black like obsidian and curved. If Eagle wanted any of the loot he had only to say.

She wandered back to the excrement she had found the previous night. Whether it was from the cat they killed or the one that got away, it was hard to say, but following it, in the end, would have to be their only option.

Wolf nodded to Eagle's words. "The mewling of hungry cubs could bring any number of predators, but the cat may still be near, so you aren't wrong."

She tried to recall what her clan had taught her about hunting, how to get in the mind of her prey. If she wanted to find this little cave she had to think of where a mother would find safe for her cubs. Her mind worked around this problem as she walked along the earth in ever widening circles around the shyke.

When she found a dried footprint encased in mud she began following the trail backwards...wondering where it would lead her.

[Razkar]

There were three prizes from a kill among Razkar's clan: the meat, the bones and the pelt. The meat went to all, since the hunters did what they did for the benefit of all. The bones and pelt, however, were the property of the one who bought the beast down, who had the courage and skill to strike the killing blows.

On that hunt, it was Tinnok, and Razkar made it clear she had earned her prize.

"Take them." He said simply as they began to move out, the fangs and skull and claws of the beast wrapped in the sticky pelt. "You earned them."

Then the tedium began again, bells of slow waking, watching the ground, looking for scratch marks, sniffing for dung... though Razkar knew with an inward groan the big felines buried their stool. Wonderful.

Bells passed and Razkar could still smell the ash from their fire in the distance, but Tinnok was right in her strategy: a slow, methodical, expanding circle was the best way to find their prey, or at least some hint of it. Finally, just after midday, his friend crouched down and Razkar smiled thinly at the indent she was gazing at.

"No claw marks..." he mumbled as he reached down, fingertips brushing the smooth end of the four-toed print. "And the outside toes are more forward than a dog's... too large to be a lynx or something smaller... to small to be a tiger..."

Razkar's eyes flickered up from the track, but slowly, carefully... seeing the next track hidden under a blanket of leaves, less than five feet away. He sighed a little tensely: tracking was as much about observation as craft, and he certainly had good eyes, but experience was always better.

Knowing what to look for, where to look for it and, most importantly, what all that evidence meant.

And where it pointed you next.

"It was bounding, I think. Still running from us." The male shook his head, tension and concern in his eyes warring with the part of him trying to remain logical. "But where it went... I don't know."

He risked a glance at her and found the same calm expression on her face... and smiled. Admitting you were lacking was surprisingly difficult in Myrian culture, despite them being a meritocracy (beneath their matriarchy, anyway). But they were, before that, warriors and pride-bound clansmen. Admitting ignorance was admitting weakness, and such a thing could kill you in Falyndar. But there was no judgement in Wolf's eyes.

"Jaguars sleep in the trees." He said thoughtfully, thinking slowly, logically, trying to feel this out and the words seemed as much to himself as to her. "But the cubs couldn't be up there. They'd need... somewhere at ground level. Somewhere safe..."

Razkar listened, silently. He felt the rush of his blood in his ears, compounding his own stress and feelings of... failure... wait-

"You hear that?" His ears pricked up and with them so did he, straightening and turning his head in the sound of the voice. "Rushing water. A river..." Some fresh hope latched onto him and his eyes sparkled with it. "Perhaps a cave? There's a chance... and... these tracks look like they're heading that way..."

He began to walk and then turned, something occurring to him and he was amazed that it hadn't before. He locked eyes with Wolf and cocked an eyebrow.

"One more thing: we killed the mother yesterday. I doubt it, but... the father may still be around. The other one, the one that escaped, may be heading for the cubs and the free meal they could be. But the father may be waiting. I don't know, but... be ready..."

[Tinnok]

It was such slow going. No one ever told the hunter that some hunts were more looking than...well anything else. And Eagle's eyes were unsurprisingly better than her own. She found the first track, but he found the trail, and the scat after that, and marks upon the tree.

Tinnok felt the fool, but did not give show to it, making sure to look at the marks from all angles to better catch on in the future. She would learn to become the ultimate hunter someday...

She listened to his musings and nodded sagely, and though they didn't know where the tracks led, their trail was leading ever upward. Putting cubs in a higher place seemed a good enough move, a gradual slope leading them...somewhere.

And then there was the water. Of course Eagle was right, water covered sound and could feed your cubs if a hunt went poorly, it was the perfect setting to hide near.

He was being so logical, so informative, that she couldn't help but snort at his last comment, looking up at him with bemused yellow eyes.

"Have you ever seen a male Myrian tiger looking after cubs in the yards?" The question was innocent enough, and she saw Eagle hesitate before the slow shake of his heads.


"Male cats are built for one thing, protecting their turf and breeding, unlike our tigers, they're always bigger than the females too. They don't stick around to raise cubs. Whoever the other parent is is likely off in an entirely other part of the jungle, but...I like that you think jaguar's are one big family, its cute..."

A rock was pelted at her chest rather ineffectually and she grinned, breaking through the foliage to face a wide running stream. It was strong and looked deep, but as Tinnok shifted the remains of the jaguar so the pelt wouldn't get wet, she found it came to just above her waist. She looked back at Eagle and gestured for him to follow, clinging to rocks when she could so as to not get swept off her feet and carried Goddess knows where.

ON the other side, drenched, but also refreshed, she disappeared into the thick jungle, the volume of plants near gaps in the forest twice as much as everywhere else, and emerged on the other side of the green wall, eyes searching upwards. A set of cliffs shot up above her, a steep climb away from the stream. She could see no alcoves from their position, but the rocks made a serpent's trail before being consumed by jungle, which meant plenty of opportunities for the cranny she had seen in the mother's last memories.

She took a deep breath and began climbing the rocky hill that would lead to tiny mountain they found themselves facing.

[Razkar]

"How can it be so petching cold?!"

Razkar hissed the words out through teeth he were sure were blue as he waded behind the more sure-footed female. The stream was much more than that; a river, deep and wide and rushing through a dry bed that had long-needed it. Razkar knew that later that season it would recede, but a whole new swirl of predators and prey would call the blue and gurgling tendril home by that point, then scatter in that infallible way of animals for better prospects.

That was not on his mind, however; the fact that his balls were shrinking into his pelvis, was.

"So humid and close you can feel your brain melt out your ears," he muttered like a juvy in patrol, slipping over moss-slick rocks under his feet and lurching from handhold to handhold. "But the water? Freezing. Icy. Kaleans don't get water this cold!"

Well, that was an exaggeration, he knew. Apparently the barbarian lands had water so cold it actually turned solid, like... a sort of packed snow. He knew what it was called... damnit... began with an "i"...

His frowning face found Wolf on the opposite bank, and he stilled himself, and his mind. Already he could see the female girding herself, gnosis on her shoulder and arm contorting and twisting, glowing faintly as some power he could not comprehend was marshaled.

Eagle looked up the chaotic mess of rock, vine and trees and knew they would need it. Sharp-eyed and keen-eared as he was, he was not an animal, could not think like one, and despite all his hunts, he'd never tracked down cubs. And though the daunting mess of boulders was hardly the mountains of the north, there were hundreds of places for the cubs to hide.

Or run to, if they hear us coming, which they will.

The male exhaled a little louder than necessary, the closest he would get to voicing his dissent. What in the hells were they doing, after all? Mounting another hunt? A rescue mission? A... what? Mission from a goddess? Razkar didn't even know anymore. What he did know was that there was prey to be found, and his friend needed him.

Which is enough, bless and damn it...

"Might as well get started."

She nodded, once, and then they were both climbing, silent and fixed on their goal: the top. Even as his arms strained and his thighs tightened with ever jerking step upward, Razkar knew this was the right call. The senses of animals were marvels, true, but they didn't expect trouble from a cliff, much like a thinking being wouldn't. So hopefully they'd catch them unawares.

That is if-

-a squealing, shrieking fury of fur and feathers and bony bill careened from a hole in the cliff and exploded into Razkar's face, pecking madly for a moment-

"Fuck!"

-sending him swinging away, one hand batting madly, the other grimly holding to a gash in the rock, so hard that it cut into his palm...

Before the evicted parakeet finally flew off and to a nearby tree, screeching at him indignantly. Razkar glared at it and calculated the odds of a) it still being there when he reached the summit and b) him putting an arrow through its head at that time.

Neither was favorable.

"Next time, you little shit..."

Eagle looked down and saw it was too far too fall. He took stock... one foot still solid, one hand... fine, so lets double that-

-and as Wolf looked down in concern she saw him grunt and twist himself back so he was facing the cliff, both hands and feet slotted into whatever apertures he could find... then look up at her.

"You could have helped!" He hissed, but the smile at the end of it showed just how "angry" he truly was. "Placated it in... bird talk, or whatever you can do with that mark on your arm..."