Closed Seasons May Change (Khara)

[Zhol]

|.

Horse boy.

Zhol didn't know many words of Nari, but he knew those. He heard it muttered about it often enough to have found out the translation. It was the Inarta's name for him, one of many: not only was he the custodian of inferior, non-flying creatures, but they didn't even give him the credit of calling him a man. It was disparaging, an insult from everyone who uttered it.

Except from her. He wasn't sure if she knew it; wasn't sure if she realised that she was taking an insult and, with a smile, turning it into endearment that touched him every time he heard it. She'd stolen the claws and the teeth from the phrase: every hurtful attempt at it's use simply became a reminder of happier times, with her.

Perhaps it was rarity that made times like this so special; they saw each other often by Inarta standards, yes, but for someone raised sharing close quarters with a tent full of siblings, parents, and infant cousins; for someone who saw the same people each and every day for the first seventeen years of his life; for someone who had, almost always, had his twin, the other side of his coin, perpetually at his side, their encounters were desperately few and far between.

Her burst of childish behaviour solicited a smile. When they were alone, when there was no fear of her being seen, her whole demeanour changed. She went from anxiously respectful friend to something far closer; perhaps not close in the way that some part of him desired, but close in the way that she wanted, and that was what mattered in the end. If this was their relationship as she defined it, if this was as close as she desired them to be, then he would embrace it graciously, and gratefully; any excuse for an extra few moments of Khara brightening his day.

"I'm coming," he half-grumbled, struggling hard to fight off the smile that would ruin his faked grumpiness. Khara had sprung up the slope with all the sure-footed speed of a Skygoat, her tiny frame and tiny feet finding footholds with effortless ease. Zhol by comparison struggled, his feet dwarfing each footing and making it possible to follow her path. The torch in his hand didn't exactly make the task any easier, either. He succeeded though, a few protruding roots and rocks grabbed for added balance as he half-walked, half-climbed; finally he reached the summit and straightened up, drinking in the sight before him.

His breath stuttered in his chest, but it was Khara who occupied his gaze, and not the tower. The way she gazed at the view with such wonderment, the tower's glow and the torch's fire conspiring to perfectly accent every curve of her face, to emphasise the awe that filled her eyes...

"I don't think I've ever seen anything so beautiful."

The words tumbled from his mouth with undeniable honesty before he even had the time to comprehend them. Instantly his stomach clenched in panicked regret, and desperately he hoped Khara would mistake his words as being about the tower.

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Nari" | "Symenos"
This template was made by Khara. She was bribed with coffee and jammy dodgers.

[Khara]

"I knew you'd like it." Khara practically beamed as she spoke. All the uncertainty, the scratches on her hands, the bit of wounded pride, all of it was worth it to see the look that came over Zhol.

It was just as she had told him, Wind Reach was his home now. No matter what bad things had happened that had lead him there, she was determined to show him everything Skyinarta had to offer that could make him feel like the trip wasn't all for naught. She had to, if for no other reason than she owed him. It was rare that a day went by when she spoke with Zhol that she wasn't reminded of the fact he had saved her life less than a year ago. He never had asked for anything in return, never had seemed to expect any form of repayment, but Khara knew she never would be able to balance what had happened between them. It didn't stop her from trying at every turn, though.

Khara tried to judge how long the short climb had taken them, it couldn't have been more than half a bell, which still left them with plenty before the change would happen. She turned away from her friend and looked back over the yellow tinted valley and let out a small sigh. The girl could remember the first time her mother had believed she was old enough to come to this place, she had so much trouble just making it up the path but her mother had patiently waited for the small girl at every struggle. The woman had never lent a hand to assist, she always seemed to believe that one had to overcome obstacles on their own and it had been one of the first times she had proved that lesson. A brief flash of memory when she had finally reached the summit that night appeared in her mind; sniffling over scraped knees and bruised and scratched hands on the verge of tears. The gem had been a stunning icy blue that time and Khara had fallen in love with the sight and forgotten about all the pain she had gone through to see it in an instant. And when it had suddenly flared a brilliant green that seemed to bring life back to the snow covered valley and had looked over at the proud huntress to find that the woman's eyes had been trained on her daughter... It was the first, and one of the only times Khara felt that look had been for her.

A small quiet laugh escaped as the scene finished replaying in her mind and she sat down, thankfully of her own will this time. She glanced back to Zhol once more and motioned for him to join her. The thoughts of her mother had brought back questions now that she looked at him again. When they had first met she had asked what had brought him to Wind Reach and he had explained then, or at least tried to, his hesitation had been clear and her understanding of Common had been rough and all in all she had only understood tiny fragments. Enough to know that he had left home after something happened that Zhol was not proud of, but details were completely lost. Khara wondered if it had something to do with the way his former city moved. Maybe something had gotten left behind? Something had been broken? She couldn't quite remember.

"You said I can ask you anything, right?" She asked, turning back to the view in front of them. "Tell me more about the moving city? How does that happen? How can an entire city just stand up and walk away?"

"Nari" | "Common"

[Zhol]

|.

The question surprised him, not because it was unwelcome, but because it was unexpected. Khara was always so tentative and apologetic about asking anything; Zhol had always assumed it was because she felt she had no right to. Suddenly however, a new possibility emerged: they'd spoken about his home, that night where he had harboured her in safety from the riots in his room, but in simple terms, peppered with broken understanding and mistranslated words; had she simply not understood? Was her reluctance all because she was afraid of how he might feel if she knew she hadn't absorbed and remembered his incomprehensible words?

His expression blossomed into a smile: not forced in the slightest, and absolutely brimming with genuine warmth. He shuffled a little on the ground beside her, just enough to turn towards her and explain to her eyes, rather than the side of her head. "Tents," he said simply, fighting hard against the urge for the hand holding the torch to join the other in gesticulating. "The whole city is nothing but tents, aside from the occasional few solid structures built onto the back of a cart."

"Whenever the city moves," he explained, "Everything comes down. What little stuff you own gets shoved in a bag, thrown onto a horse or into a wagon, and then the whole pavilion - the big, big tents that families live in - get's dismantled. Poles, ropes, canvas; all in a wagon. All loaded up. All the big communal tents, and everything inside; same thing. The animal pens get dismantled, and the livestock either goes in a wagon or get's herded along with us. Everything taken down, packed away; and then we walk, or ride, to the site where we spend the next season."

He cast his gaze around him quickly, spying a soft patch of earth in the space between him, and a sufficiently long and sturdy stick. He jabbed one end into the ground in four places, marking out the points of a compass, and added a few crude squiggles in the centre to signify waves. "This is the Sea of Grass: a huge, open, rolling plain with nothing but waves of grass and animals determined to kill you. Right now, at this very moment, Endrykas is moving southwards, away from Syliria and towards Zindal Bay." The stick drew a curving path as he spoke, connecting the compass points together. "By winter, the city is as close to Eyktol as we can get, trying to make the most of all of the extra heat there. We stay for a while at the Stardown - that's the place where the Zintila fell, a great big dent in the world - and then start heading north towards Riverfall for the spring. Then, by summer, we've circled back round to the north, near Kenash and the Suvan Sea.

He hesitated for a moment. "That's where I was born," he said, his voice suddenly quieter. "And where I left from."

His eyes fell, but not away as he expected to. They broke contact with Khara's eyes, yes, but didn't stray far, a strange urge coiling itself around his chest as his vision settled on her lips. Internal horror wrenched them further still, staring intently at his crude diagram for fear of looking at anything else. "Sorry, he apologised on impulse, before his mind realised that Khara would want some sort of explanation as to why. He grasped for the easiest excuse he could think of; one heavily weighted in truth. "I talk too much."

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Nari" | "Symenos"
This template was made by Khara. She was bribed with coffee and jammy dodgers.

[Khara]

Tents. How had such an obvious answer been such a loss to her? She began to feel completely embarrassed for picturing hills somehow raising and rolling across this supposed sea she had heard of, but Zhol's explanation brought a halt to it. It was hard to get mad at yourself when learning something new, after all. She listened intently, trying to take it all in and picture everything with the help of his rough drawing. It was only after he finished that she looked back up at Zhol and let a small laugh leave her.

"Don't be sorry," she began, a playful grin forming before she spoke again while giving him the smallest of nudges with her shoulder against his. "I like your many words."

The misspoken phrase from earlier was repeated and Khara couldn't help but laugh again in a bright giggle. It felt good to laugh, it seemed she never got to do a lot of that when in Wind Reach proper. There were far too many things to worry about, not enough to be really happy about. It hadn't always been that way, but the previous year's famine and the riots that closed out Winter had changed all that somehow. She wasn't the only Inarta affected by it, even the higher castes seemed to be. It was as if the whole of Skyinarta seemed to have taken on a much more somber tone, encased in a haze that refused to be lifted. Khara wished it would let up soon, it would be good for everyone as a whole and more importantly she couldn't stand the thought that this Wind Reach was the one her friend was most familiar with.

Khara's gaze lowered once more to the diagram Zhol had drawn in the dirt that roughly represented Cyphrus. Was the region as big as Kalea? If so that was a lot of traveling. "You get to see a lot of different places when you were going up, then, yes? I can't imagine what that's like. I always wanted to visit Lhavit. It sounds so pretty when the Endals who go there to trade describe it. They say that's where Zintila lives now but that sounds more like bedtime stories. But I can't ever go. You know how it is, you either work and live or you don't and you die. If I left and tried to come back," she forced a laugh at the thought, despite it somehow revealing one of her biggest fears. "Let's just say I don't think I'm really suited to wear a lontev. I don't think I'd last very long."

As she had spoken her fingertip had idly pressed into the dirt and drawn a crude star. The sides were lopsided and none a one of the five points were equal but she smiled at it anyway. Slowly she looked back up at Zhol, a slightly worried expression tugging at her brow. "I know you tried to speak to me before about it, because I asked, but I don't think I really understood then. I think the whole riots thing was taking up too much of my head..." Khara frowned as she realized she was avoiding asking the question. "Why did you come here?"

"Nari" | "Common"

[Zhol]

|.

This was some cruel trick, some new torture that Lhex had devised for him. His heart, much slower at climbing the slope than he had been thanks to it's emotional setbacks, had finally made itself comfortable in his chest again; at the sound of her laughter, her teasing tone, and the way she treated him as if they two were alone in the world and there was no one else to matter or care, it began to swell; but that only revealed the fractures that had begun to form, not fully broken, but riddled with cracks. This was what he wanted. This was the way he had been longing for her to treat him for all the days he had known her. Yet, now that he was here, he suddenly realised that where he truly wanted to be was just a little further: on the far side of an impassable chasm, with the only slender rope bridge of hope that spanned across it lying slashed in half and swinging uselessly, tauntingly beneath his feet.

Still, the sound of her voice was soothing too; he let it massage his emotions into a state of resigned acceptance. He even mustered a smile, though it was fragile; only a thin veneer that wouldn't hold up to much scrutiny.

And then she'd asked that. The obvious question. The simple question. The question that seemed so obvious; that seemed so harmless. The question with an answer so complex, so hard to translate from Drykas culture to Wind Reach; the answer that even if he could manage to make her understand the severity, she might never want to be anywhere near him again.

"It's hard to explain," he began carefully. He tried to keep his words light, his tone neutral, despite the clamouring from parts of his mind to simply refuse to tell her. Yes, they were right, she would probably detest him as soon as she knew, and that would be agony; but the knowledge that he was keeping the truth from her, lying to her, would tear his insides to shreds.

"Endrykas is very different to Wind Reach. When a man and a woman are in love and decide to be together -" He winced at the overly cautious phrasing, dancing around the subject, wishing he had the bravery to simply talk about that sort of act in front of her, without fearing what unfortunate memories it might bring up for her. "- they become married. They make a promise to love each other, live together, and be together always. The man becomes her husband, and the woman becomes his wife; there are so many women in Endrykas that some men may marry two or three women. They, and their children, live in the man's pavilion - his tent - and stay there. Children don't go off to become Yasi when they reach a certain age: the girls do not leave until they marry, and move into the pavilion of their new husband; and the men stay until the pavilion is too full, or until they have enough children of their own to need their own pavilion. Sometimes there can be as many as twenty people, all living within the same tent. That is a Drykas family. It is like -"

He searched his mind for some sort of comparison; something that Khara might understand. "It is a pack, like wolves. The husband, the father, is the alpha male: and he protects his mates and his offspring until the young males are ready to form packs of their own."

He frowned at himself, not sure if that explanation was satisfactory. "There are more things to consider in Endrykas, more complications, but family and pavilion are the most important things. I am here because -"

Here it was: the admission; the shame; the truth that would change how her eyes looked at him, how her mind thought of him. His eyes fell as he continued, dragging his frown into a deep, sorrowful furrow.

"I am here because my family no longer wanted me; because I was a failure; and because I hurt them all." The words became more difficult to say, corners of his mind conspiring to tighten his throat in an attempt to strangle his voice and prevent her hearing them. "Instead of castes, like Inarta society, the Drykas are split into horseclans, each one equal and with a specific task to perform. My clan, the Ruby Clan, are the artisans. It was not mandatory that I learn a craft, but it was expected; that was the hope my father had for me. But, no matter what skill I attempted, I could do nothing but fumble and fail. I was a disappointment, so inept and so useless compared to my brothers and sisters. In Wind Reach, you see my skills with horses as laudable, and worthy of praise; worthy of an Avora, no less. In Endrykas?" He choked out a bitter laugh. "In Endrykas, Striders - our horses - choose riders the same way that eagles do, but there are no castes: either you are too young to ride, like a Yasi; chosen, like an Endal; or you are nothing, like a Dek.

His breath stuttered from him as the weight crushed his shoulders into a deeper slump; the torch in his hand drooped slowly towards the ground, the effort to hold it aloft no longer able to be mustered. "I was - am - nothing, and my father hated me for it."

There was no going back now. He had been at the top of a scree slope, and had taken the first step; now he was an avalanche of confession, and there was no use trying to stop, for Khara's opinion of him would reach rock bottom regardless.

"My mother, she tried every way she could to find a use for me. When I disappointed my father for the last time, she took me aside, and she offered to help me learn reimancy. My twin, Dinah, had already been initiated, had already learn to control water in ways that bent my mind; I was all too eager to do the same. The initiation was brutal: the res that I can leak from my skin does not form naturally, and so another reimancer had to teach my soul to produce it by drowning me in his own res. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life; but it worked, you've seen for yourself that it did."

He smiled bitterly. "I was so proud at the first flame I conjured. I was working miracles, doing things that defied understanding; but even that didn't impress my father. If anything he hated me more, and I never understood why. I tried so hard to impress him, to do something that would make him respect me, just for a second."

His voice failed. His eyes tried to glance in Khara's direction, but he stopped them, too afraid of what it would do to him to see her slowly toppling opinion of him displayed across her face. "You've probably heard that Drykas are supposed to have long hair," he guessed, "And have wondered why I don't. For a Drykas, hair can show age, and status, and prestige. Mine was never long, but it was longer than this; I may not have been much, I may not have been chosen by a Strider, or earned my windmarks; but at least I was something, the tiniest degree above being nothing."

His expression tightened, a smile tried to form, but sadness took it in a stranglehold, stole the moisture from his throat, and poured it into his eyes. "I had many siblings: not just my Dinah, but two brothers and four sisters from my father's first wife; my mother was his second. The youngest of them, Yahalla, she -" A tiny shred of happiness escaped him as a sigh. "She was the only one younger than Dinah and I, and she was such a sweet, gentle soul. There was something not quite right about her, but I loved her with all my heart; she was the only one who didn't look at me like the disappointment I was. She had seen me practicing my reimancy from a distance, but asked me to show her up close; she said that perhaps I was trying too hard, perhaps trying to prove myself to our Darda was too much; that maybe if I showed her it wouldn't matter so much, because she was proud and loved me already, no matter what I did."

A stray tear escaped, rolling solitary down his cheek, loitering precariously on his jawline before leaping towards oblivion and the ground. "So I showed her; just a small flame at first, floating in the palm of my hand. The way her eyes lit up? The way she smiled? Wonder is the only word for it, and so I tried more. I reached too far, I squeezed out too much of my soul, and I -" His eyes squeezed closed, trying to drive the vivid memory from his mind; but it wouldn't budge. "When you give too much of yourself to reimancy? They call it overgiving. Sometimes it hurts but... sometimes it doesn't? Sometimes it is intoxicating, and you begin to hear whispers, voices spurring you on and on. I couldn't resist; and then when I realised what was happening, it was too late to stop it. I watched my little Yahalla watching me in horror, as I tried to rein in the fire that I had conjured; tried to stop it spreading; but I couldn't. It was too much."

A halfhearted glance checked the ground beside him and, finding only rock, dirt, and nothing flammable, he set the torch down, freeing himself to bury his face in his hands. He tried to squeeze the memories from his eyes, but they persisted; a breath hissed through his lungs, fingers running backwards through his missing hair."Our pavilion, our home, burned to the ground. I was filled with so much dread that I froze; my father barely got Yahalla and I out before the whole place collapsed. All my brothers; my sisters; my cousins; everything they knew, everything they owned, all turned to ashes because of me."

He stared at the distance. "Emberwing was the name of our pavilion; the name of my family. Was," he stressed. "That's the name engraved on my sword; it used to be my father's. As he used it to cut off my hair - to make me look like an insignificant nothing in Drykas eyes - he told me that I'd burned our family to the ground as well. When he was done with me, he threw the sword on the ground, and told me to keep it; he'd need a new one, just like his family would need a new name."

A stab of pain twisted inside him. "His family, not mine; not anymore. They didn't want me; didn't a disappointing failure as a brother, or a son; didn't want a curse from Ivak plaguing them any longer. He sent me away; told me I'd never be welcome -"

"So I came here; as far away as I could get. You wanted to know why I came here, Khara?" Finally, he managed to look in her direction, just for a moment. His jaw trembled, emotions barely contained. "I'm here because no one else wanted me around."

His eyes fell away again. "Just like you don't, anymore."

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Nari" | "Symenos"
This template was made by Khara. She was bribed with coffee and jammy dodgers.

[Khara]

Khara's shoulders slumped as she listened to him, the occasional want to try and comfort caused her hand to raise, to reach out and almost touch him but was withdrawn at the last tick as she feared it would startle him, keep him from continuing. She really listened, trying to absorb every fact and not focus on the handful of words she couldn't really understand but rather focused on the entirety of things.

She wanted to apologize for asking, the obvious pain it brought him to speak of everything ripped into her. At the same time, she couldn't help but wonder if he needed this, if somehow getting everything out was like draining poison from a body. Khara hoped it would have that effect, at least. Her inability to know how to act as Zhol poured himself into the recalling left her feeling more inept than ever, she wanted nothing more than to make the anguish that appeared to consume him vanish and yet couldn't bring herself to do anything.

And when it was over, when he had finished, as much as she couldn't help but feel a little nervous in regards to his use of reimancy, nothing really shocked or horrified her except his final words.

"That's not true," she blurted out in Nari. The firmness in her tone surprised her and she shook her head, trying to shoo off the more comfortable sounding things she wanted to say as her thoughts raced in her native tongue.

"You asked me if I wanted you to stay, right? And how did I respond? I said to you, 'Yes.' " Khara fidgeted where she sat, the irrational portion of her brain protesting her next move as it tried to convince her that she would be burned from it. A sharp exhale left her before her hand finally shot out and rested on top of his. "What you did is in the past, you telling me of it does not change what has happened. A terrible accident, that is what I hear of, but it is still an accident. If such a thing happened here, the Dek would be flogged, punished, but they would not be killed. They would learn from such things and so you have. But you are not a Dek, and even if your father could not see the value of your skills, I do. We do. You are an Avora for a reason, Zhol and it is not because you are a horrible person and a failure."

She tried to give his hand a small reassuring squeeze, unsure if anything she said was helping but still she felt the need to keep trying. "Your hair is not red. You do not know anything about Wind Eagles. But as far as I am concerned, you are one of us and no story is going to change that. No past is going to change that you kept me from harm, that you hurt yourself when you saved me, that I believe you would do that for anyone that needed help. You are my friend, Zhol. My very best, closest, and most dear friend at that. And I want you around."

Her hand lifted away from his and raised, trying to echo a motion Zhol did to her when they had first met and she refused to meet his eyes. Her fingertips touched his cheek softly before the rest of her hand fell into place along his jaw and she gently tugged him to look at her. "Your past cannot hurt you now. It is time you started making a new story, I think," Khara suggested before shrugging and letting her hand drop away.

She looked back towards the valley, trying to ignore the sudden discomforting feeling that she had been too forward with him. Her hands found each other and her fingertips interlaced and twisted upon each other nervously. "If you like, you can ask me anything you want as well, you know."

"Nari" | "Common"

[Zhol]

|.

It lasted a chime at most, but it felt like an eternity as he sat there, looking into her eyes as her gentle gesture had insisted, finding nothing but honesty and sympathy within them. He remembered doing the same himself, as he'd attempted to reassure her on the day they first met; and that echo meant far more to him than even the most perfect wordsmith could ever have achieved. She didn't need to say a thing: his own words from seasons ago echoed in his mind, and did the task for her:

I'm not like them.

Her words didn't go unheard however; a few in particular began to melt the glacier that had been holding him transfixed. Best friend. Dear friend. He acted before he could stop himself; didn't try; didn't want to. He reached for her hands, gently teasing them apart, focused on them because he didn't trust what he might do if his eyes met hers again. His fingers slid gently along the underside of her arms, drawing her closer to him, and him to her. It was wrong, and he knew it; he was taking something unoffered, abusing her sympathy, exploiting her deference to his Avora status; he knew the guilt and regret would come, but also knew that just this once he was prepared to bear it.

He drew her into his embrace, every urge and desire to do so for two full seasons finally brought to fruition in a single moment. He buried his head into her shoulder, and as he felt her arms settle around him he realised the truth of his earlier fear, of how much of a struggle it would be for him to let go. That didn't matter now; not for these next moments as he clung to her, arms dwarfing her tiny frame. He squeezed his eyes tight, and tried to drill what she had told him into his mind: that this was where he belonged.

This was home.

It was an eternity, or an instant; he couldn't tell, but either way it wasn't long enough; not for him at least. It would have been easier to have sawn off his arms than pry them free, but he managed anyway, somehow. He drew back, not far enough to release her completely - a desperate, selfish desire begged him to drag out this one and only embrace for as long as he was able - but enough to find her eyes again, his own glistening in the dim light, filled with a blend of gratitude and sadness.

"Thank you," he said quietly, his voice barely managing to even croak the words out. He mustered the smallest of smiles. "Mine very best friendship."

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Nari" | "Symenos"
This template was made by Khara. She was bribed with coffee and jammy dodgers.

[Khara]

Ten years, two seasons, and seventy days. That had was how long it had been since someone had drawn their arms around her and pulled her to them the way that Zhol had. Khara wanted to focus on him, to let the moment play out, but memory was cruel and overwrote everything. She had been in tears, sobbing until her chest had hurt and she could barely breathe. Her eighth birthday, the day she had to join the ranks of the Yasi. She had begged, pleaded, everything she could think of to have it not happen. Her mother had looked down upon her, unsympathetic at first, stern and true to every memory that Khara had of the woman, but then she had faltered and gone to one knee and swept her tiny daughter into a hold that had seemed to speak every word the huntress had never managed to say to her offspring. You'll do fine, she had offered when the words had finally come. Nothing else had been said and the comforting embrace had ended just as quickly as the current.

The gentle pressure around her left all too soon, but with the end the world was brought back in focus and Khara was forced to realize what had occurred. She wanted to say something then, to tell him that he was free to do such a thing whenever he wanted but it collided with other memories and the resulting explosion knocked the reality of the situation back to her. He was thanking her, in a way that didn't need words but came out in his usual poorly accented Nari anyway. Somehow that made it all the better.

Her mouth quirked to the side in a partial smirk at his phrasing. An urge to clarify and correct came and passed and she let out a small laugh again at the sudden awkwardness that was felt. Khara wasn't used to being thanked for anything, after all, and what she had said didn't seem worth such a thing. Thanks weren't needed when speaking something so truthful, or so the girl believed.

"You are very welcome, Zhol of Wind Reach." It sounded completely foolish and she didn't care. If nothing else she wanted to remember this moment, this tiny instant that she felt like she had done something right for a change.

"Nari" | "Common"

[Zhol]

|.

Zhol of Wind Reach.

It sounded so grand; too grand, absurdly so. It was the way you addressed a warrior hero, or some revered general; not some horse boy granted status because of what felt like little more than an administrative error. He couldn't help but join her in laughing; more of a release valve on the emotional maelstrom that had been raging inside him than anything else.

"I messed the words up that bad, huh?" he teased, but there was no bite to his words at all. Every second that ticked by with that smile on her lips peeled an extra hundredweight of sadness and angst away from his shoulders. She knew she'd helped, he could tell that much; the usual panicked look of someone who feared her every action was a terrible mistake had briefly gone from her eyes. He doubted she realised how much, but for once - for now - everything else that muddied things between them had vanished, and she looked at him the way he'd always wanted her to.

Well, almost.

The thought lingered, but it had no claws. This was enough; more than enough; and he refused to let his own mind spoil that for him. He put it to work instead, searching for a question to answer her invitation. There were so many things he wanted to know, so many thoughts tripping over themselves to be asked; but so many felt too intimate, or carried with them the danger of an answer that was painful for one or both of them, an that was the last thing either of them needed.

He supposed there was one thing though; one question that mattered to him more than any of the others he felt prepared to ask.

"Why do you do it?" The words tumbled out of him, more cryptic than he'd intended. "Scouting, I mean. Putting yourself in danger like that. You put yourself in harm's way just as much as any hunter does, and yet they look down on you. You tolerate so much unfair treatment, so much ingratitude, so much abuse -"

He forced himself to trail off, steering himself away from the negative emotions he was intending to avoid. This wasn't about the rest of Wind Reach; this was about her. "Why do you work so hard, and so selflessly? And why aren't you more proud of the fact that you do?"

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Nari" | "Symenos"
This template was made by Khara. She was bribed with coffee and jammy dodgers.

[Khara]

The smile that once felt like it would completely take over her entire body and lift her spirits up and away into the soft yellow glow of the watchtower's gem, suddenly faltered. Her eyes looked away and she found her lower lip pulled into her mouth just slightly. Khara gave a small shrug of her shoulders as she looked to where Zhol still rested her arms in his hands and watched herself gently begin to draw small circles along his forearm with her fingertip. There was no good answer to the question, but once more she owed it to him to answer, just like he had done for her.

"Someone must do it," the half-truth tumbled from her. A small sigh escaped before she forced herself to continue, the thought of his own painful past seeming to dwarf anything she had suffered. "I wasn't ever very good at other things. Could never get a feel for how to handle a raptor, was awful at glass blowing, miserable at sewing, and not strong enough for other crafts. I liked archery but was always a bit a step behind the others. I kept being told that I didn't have enough focus. My head wanders too much unless I wandered with it. I liked looking at animal prints though, and I wanted to be a hunter so badly..."

Her head lifted, but not to return her gaze to his. Rather she found her eyes looking back over the Sanikas Valley. "But no one wanted me to be their apprentice. I guess I just didn't try hard enough. I wasn't good at anything in particular, I was really scared they would just make me become a Dek but then the scouts were taking volunteers to learn what they did from the people who the teachers said had some promise."

Khara paused as another small shrug took over her shoulders. "No one wanted to do it. We were told from the start that we would all probably die. 'They send you into The Unforgiving to find game for the hunters,' that was how they put it but we all knew that meant you weren't going to learn how to kill anything."

It sounded so fatalistic when she put it that way. Somehow she was turning her life's work into sounding like some form of torture they pushed upon the Dek too stupid enough to not know any better and figured their lives were worth the extra few pinions a season. It had never seemed that way to her, though. Being a game scout meant something else, it meant... "But I didn't care," Khara continued. "Being a scout, you learn some of the skills that hunters have. It's like it can be a stepping road."

A smile finally cracked through the distant expression she had taken on and she shook her head and looked back to Zhol. "I said that wrong, didn't I?"

She looked down once more to where her fingers had been idly running across the skin of his arm. A small blush began to rise in her cheeks as she forced her hands to be still. A small lick was given to moisten her lips before she resumed her explanation, fighting against the urges to avoid speaking the next part. "I guess I just wanted to do something good, I wanted to be useful. But that wasn't why I really took the job. I took it because, if the scouts got to be around the hunters, I'd get to see my mom again. I'd get to watch her hunt. Or so I thought. I only got to be on a hunt with her and a few others one time. There were other scouts then too, a group of us all in The Unforgiving."

Reluctance began constricting her chest as if a ghost were trying to forcefully crush her insides as it was possessing her, willing her to not speak. Khara could feel her brows knit together, a small twitch that forced her face to scrunch and wiggle against the tingly feeling that caused her to pull in and press her lips tight together. A quick breath through her nose and a forceful blink acted as a fragile dam to the sudden surge that brought notice to her quickened heartbeat.

Khara sucked in anther breath and ran her tongue roughly against the edge of her upper teeth and let out the air in a rough exhale. "And she didn't even act like she knew me," the words left with far more force than she expected, her voice raised in pitch and volume. "It was like I was a total stranger and she just... looked at me like I was nothing! Like I was a drudge pretending to be a Chiet and she hated me for it."

Ragged breaths overcame her at the sudden outburst and her hands clenched into fists, the right of which came up and roughly pressed to her eye and dragged across. There were no tears, but the action came regardless. Her head raised as Khara looked up at Zhol, a bitter laugh leaving her before she spoke again, her voice soft and quiet once more. "I'm sorry, I don't think I did a goodness in answering your question."

"Nari" | "Common"