Flashback Ask If You Don't Know

[Lani Stranger]

12th of Summer, 507AV

Note :

Lani has had many names in her life, at this point she was known as Leavou, so that is the name I will be using. For more detail on that timeline, consult her plotnotes.

The world was growing dull. Leavou had been utterly floored by the majesty of reality which existed outside of Alvadas, but within time she grew bored of it. She found the wilderness was hard and very much the same. She missed the lack of rules that existed inside of Alvadas, the predictability of the wilderness was wearing on her. At a mere eleven years old, she had been placed on top of a horse, clinging to her mother’s back and feeling the jostle of the creature beneath her. Hot summer green trees passed by them, and the child found herself snoozing in and out of wakefulness, listening to the common chatter among the caravan. Two glossy black braids bounced to the rhythm of the horse’s gate on her back, and she found herself lulling into dreams again. They had been travelling for two moons already, and she found the company to be dull, she was, of course, the youngest traveler, and so had little in the ways of playmates. The adults were fairly enamored with her, but the Konti’s daughter was growing to an age where adults still saw her as a child and yet she did not see herself as one. It caused a rift in relationships that could form and often labelled her as ‘bratty’.

She found herself longing for her old friend, the blonde human with a quick tongue and wit. Mads had always inspired Leavou to entertainment when there was no place else to go and nothing else to do. If the doe-eyed girl was with her, surely she wouldn’t be bored. Stifling a yawn, the mixed blood straightened up, loosening her grip on her mother’s waist to use one hand to fiddle with her hair.

”Ah, looks like Leth’s child has woken!” R’yse noted the movement, and the other adult who her mother had been talking too chuckled. The eleven year old crinkled her nose at R’yse, knowing her mother could not see. R’yse had taken to calling her Leth’s child because she slept through the days of travel and wanted to be awake and do things at night. She can’t say she had always been like that, but the child did not mind the sleeping schedule.

”Looks like she doesn’t like that nickname.” the other adult commented, having seen her face.

”Ah, she doesn’t like being teased. But where we are going she can stay up all night if she would like, and the city will stay up with her.” R’yse spoke in an informative tone towards Leavou, although her words sounded as if she was still talking to the other adult.

”Really?” Leavou couldn’t help but ask, curiosity broke her focus on trying to dislike her mother’s teasing.

”Yes,” The woman riding on the horse beside R’yse piped up. ”Zintila’s home never sleeps.” The Lhavitian native did not explain it any better and that frustrated the child slightly, but Leavou had already remembered that she was trying to be cool and disinterested, and so she flipped her head, resting her other cheek on her mother’s back so she could watch the warm green trees pass by beside her. The adults continued to converse without her, well used to her pretend disinterest in the adult conversations.

[Lani Stranger]

The horses were going too slow for her liking, although she really couldn’t do anything about it. The wilderness guide was walking at a brisk pace beside his horse, which told her that they were definitely moving faster than they would if the humanoids were walking, but the child was still discontent with the pace.

A thought occurred to her, and like most thoughts, the small half-Chaktawe child did not think through it very hard before acting on it. She wanted to talk to the wilderness guide, but she had no interest in slowing her mother down. The horse wasn’t going too fast anyway.

The child swung her right leg around so that both her legs were on the same side. R’yse hardly reacted, used to the eleven year old turning around to sit backwards on the horse. R’yse had complained the first few times, but had since gotten used to her daughter’s shenanigans. Except Leavou did not flip her other leg over the rump of the horse to sit in her usual backwards stance, instead she looked down on the dirt road that passed below them. It didn’t look too far, or too fast.

With no more hesitation, the halfblood fell forward from the rump of the horse, curling her legs and letting her already scabbed knees take most of the fall. She was well used to falling from heights and so she let the impact roll up through her hips and shoulder. The fall knocked the breath out of her temporarily, and she felt the pang of discomfort in her hip, but it wasn’t anything the child couldn’t help.

”Leavou! What on all of Mizahar do you think you’re doing?!” Her mother’s shocked Kontinese broke the relatively calm progression of the caravan. Leavou was already getting her feet underneath her and brushing the dirt from her knees when R’yse slowed her horse and turned it around.

”I’m good!” She insisted in quick Kontinese, her feet already flashing beneath her. She bounded past her shocked mother, who resigned to shaking her head and tapping her horse back into a walking pace again. Leavou left the two adults behind, oblivious to their new tones of disapproval, and ran up to the wilderness guide at the front. The older man witnessed her approach, turning slightly to see her match her pace with his. He was a full adult and she was much smaller, and so had to nearly jog to keep up with him and the caravan.

”Yes?” He asked in an expectant tone, focusing on the trail ahead of them.

”Hey,” Leavou breathed, trying to catch her breathe. The wilderness guide had essentially tolerated Leavou in the past few moons. He was not rude to the child in any form, and he tolerated her questions, but he had never gone out of his way to be friendly. The grumpy eleven year old, however, did not care. She always had questions for the man, and as long as he answered she was happy.

”When will we be there?” She asked her usual starting question, and he sighed.

”Six years.” He gave his usual sarcastic answer to the child, and she sighed as well, no longer expecting a real answer from the man. Ry’se told her they would be there within two moons, but Leavou would have liked to trust the wilderness guide more.

[Lani Stranger]

”Well, how do you know it is summer then? We left in Spring. It isn’t like there are any towers out here, or Womiyu to tell us.” She asked, raising her arms and letting them fall in forced exasperation. She had seen R’yse do it enough that she felt like an adult when she did it too. When Leavou looked back up at the wilderness guide, she could see a crook of a smile in the corner of his mouth.

”You stay up pretty late.” He mentioned the observation, and the eleven year old hrumphed a reply, unsure of what the Wilderness Guide was getting at.

”How often do you look at the moon?” He asked, wrinkled dark face squinted up at the sun for a few ticks before looking back down at her.

”Sometimes, to pray.” She shrugged. R’yse had encouraged her to pray to Leth since she stayed up late, but the reckless child had not really had anything to pray to the moon God for.

”Do you notice anything about it?” He asked, searching her answer for something.

”The moon changes so many times during the season! Of course I notice it, but it can’t tell me that it’s summer.” She dragged her last word to sound like duh without saying it. R’yse had banned her from doing so, but she was still full of the childhood sass that one her age was prone to. She had gotten used to every adult in their caravan, so she was no longer worried about offending them. For the most part all the adults put up with her. Their driver was rude, but she tried not to talk to the old man that sat on the cart anyway.

”Riiight, that is the phases of the moon, but do you notice anything else? How about the sun? Anything different about the sun?” The Wilderness Guide was very patient with her, watching the world around them and seeing more than she ever could, but still taking the time to listen and talk to the child, allowing her time to guess what he so obviously had the answers for.

”It’s hot, I noticed that.” She answered, now ready to bore him until he simply told her rather than leading her through the odd guessing game. She honestly hadn’t noticed anything about the moon or sun, and she just wanted to know what the detail was that he was trying to share with her.

”It’s larger. During the spring the sun grows larger, during fall it grows smaller. It is largest in summer, and smallest in winter.” He informed her, and Leavou’s mouth gaped slightly as she realized what he was talking about. The new information did make sense to her, and she realized he had answered her earlier questions, but of course the eleven year old now had far more questions for him.

”Is it hotter because Syna is closer to us?”

”Yes.”

”Why?”

”Because light is hot. The sun is hot, fire is hot. Light is just hot.” He shrugged, seemingly content with that answer, but Leavou was not done.

”Why?”

”Why what?”

”Why is fire hot? And the sun? Why is light hot? Dark isn’t cold.” She observed, thinking of the hot summer nights that they slept through. They started a fire to warm their food, but no one in the camp wanted to sleep by one so they often put it completely out after the necessity was done.

[Lani Stranger]

”I’m not sure.” Leavou huffed at his answer, unfortunately she believed him, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want answers.

”Does the moon get bigger in summer? Or in winter?”

”The moon stays the same, except for on very rare occasions when Leth shows off.”

”What do you mean? Why doesn’t it get bigger?”

”I’m not sure why it doesn’t get bigger,” He answered honestly again, leaving her questions to a dead end, but she had others.

”Well what do you mean by Leth showing off?”

”Have you ever seen the moon very large for no particular reason? Or blue? Or red? Leth will do what he likes.”

”Why?” This time the Wilderness Guide didn’t answer her, his long strides not wavering as an amused smile settled on her face at all her questions. They had veered far from the original topic, but Leavou didn’t mind. She loved talking to people who knew things she didn’t and she was intent on learning whatever they knew.

”Is travel different between spring and summer? Or summer and fall? I know winter is bad.”

”Yes, travel is very different. Luckily summers are not too bad in Kalea, because we are at a higher elevation and far from the sea it does not get too humid or hot here. But Spring can be just as dangerous as winter, when all the snow melts.”

”What does elevation mean?” She asked.

”Like, how high above something is.”

”Oh. Why is the snow melting dangerous?” Leavou was quick to accept his answer, and then move on to the next.

”Because when the snow melts, it turns into water, and when water rushes through the river beds and down the mountains that haven’t been used to that amount of water, it floods.”

”Flooding is dangerous?”

”Of course.”

”Why?” And so they went on. Every question that the Wilderness Guide answered seem to sprout three more, and the child was meticulous about making sure each one was answered. She was beginning to understand a little more about the sun and the moon, about flooding in spring, drought in fall, and the dangers of heat stroke. She could have asked ‘Why’ about a million times more before the Wilderness Guide finally shushed her. He had to get back on his horse, and so did she. The trail was getting smaller here as they headed up a mountain side, and so the caravan would have to get in a line.

”Can I ride with you?”

”You should probably get in the wagon actually, and don’t disturb the driver. Sit quietly.” The Wilderness Guide instructed, while the party slowed. R’yse called for Leavou and the child’s ebony eyes flitted back towards her mother.

”Come back, Leavou!” R’yse commanded, but the child didn’t want to. She didn’t want to be bored again.

”I’m gonna get in the cart!” She yelled back in Kontinese, jogging over towards the back of the covered wagon. It was stuffed to the brim with things, but she was small enough to be able to climb on the edge and hold on. She often sat in the areas where the food and feed they had diminished used to sit, and the wagon was getting roomier as the moons passed. R’yse made a sound of protest, but didn’t fight Leavou as the child began trying to keep pace with the wagon. It was easier to jump off a horse than to climb onto a moving wagon, but the child was adventurous enough to try. The worse that could happen was she fell on her face and got trampled by the following horses if their rider’s didn’t stop them. To Leavou, this wasn’t even a thought in her mind.

[Lani Stranger]

As she kept pace with the back of the wagon, she broke from her brisk jog to a full out sprint, gaining on the wooden end of the thing quickly. With a large leap she shot forward, stretching out her hands and latching onto the rim of the wagon. Her bare feet dragged in the dirt for only a tick before her wirey childhood arms pulled herself up. In a practiced move she twisted while still holding herself by her arms so that she could turn and sit backwards. She then tucked her feet into the cart and waved to her mother quickly before ducking further into the covered wagon.

The child had to approach at a weird sideways angle and then crawled down underneath a stacked crate bridge. She was the only one that could get so far into the wagon, and she knew if her mother could see the precarious things she climbed through that she would be mad. Since R’yse couldn’t, she thought the wagon to be a safe place to let the kid travel within. On the first few days of their journey the kid had picked at a few of the nuts that were part of their rations, but once she was found out she had gotten yelled at by not just her mother but every person in the group so much that she didn’t dare touch the food anymore, having not realized how precious the thing was on a long journey such as this. The only one who hadn’t yelled at her was the group’s hunter, but the weird tattooed woman had spoken very little to anyone on that journey.

R’yse had bought Leavou a set of playing cards before they left and taught her how to play a solitary game with them. However, since they left the dome of Ionu’s grace, the cards no longer swirled and changed their numbers, which meant they no longer entertained the child. So she had taken to carefully ripping and folding them together to create shapes with them. Of course that had also failed to entertain the child once all of the pieces were folded and crumpled past her ability to create any more new dolls or animals out of them. So now her private little cave, wedged between large storage crates and shielded from the light was cluttered with fading pieces of cards and odd little stones she had found. There was also an interesting Y-shaped stick that was sturdy and perfect as a sling shot. However the child had no leather strap to prepare her sling shot, so all she had were a lot of parts.

Leavou sighed, scooting her clutter out of the way and laying on her back in the wagon, letting the random jolts dig into her bag and pull at her loose limbs until she found herself drifting off despite the less than comfortable conditions in which she had crammed herself. This was what traveling was, this was what she was growing used to.

[Ssezzkero]

Riding +1, Socialization +4, Acrobatics +2, Running +3, Endurance +1, Impersonation +1, Interrogation +3, Logic +2, Astronomy +1, Wilderness Survival +2, Land Navigation +1, Climbing +1, Reality: The world outside of Alvadas, Riding passenger on a horse, Travel: Is dangerous, Travel: From Alvadas to Lhavit by land, What it’s like to move away from a friend, Lhavit’s sleep schedule, Lhavit: The Diamond of Kalea, Acrobatics: How to fall off a horse without getting hurt, Socialization: Detecting sarcasm, Impersonation: Copying your mother’s mannerisms, Astronomy: Phases of the moon, Astronomy: The size of the sun indicates the season, Light is hot but dark isn’t cold, The size of the moon does not indicate season, Wilderness Survival: Using astronomy to tell the passing of time, Higher elevations mean less sweltering summers, Further from the sea means less humidity, Melting snow causes flash floods in Kalea, Interrogation: Persistance is key, Acrobatics: Climbing into a moving cart, Travel: The importance of saving rations