Timestamp: 30th of Summer, 523 A.V.
Since the small beginnings of the Kois Clan in Syka were intent on having family time, Tazrae did what she usually did and pulled a disappearing act. Her babies were safe with their second mother, their father, and Tazrae’s presence in their life wasn’t exactly required. She could vanish tomorrow and none of them would mind it a bit. Khari and Kaysen would be raised in a two parent home full of love. They would get real skills to survive adulthood between Kami’s healing and Nyle’s weaponswork. Taz had no doubt about the fact that Nyle was an excellent father and that Kami didn’t mind she hadn’t been the body to birth them.
In a way it made Tazrae furious. She tried her best to hide it. She bled inside every time she turned the babies over to her sister to give them family time. And in fact, there were times that Kaysen cried when Taz came to pick him up because the boy simply didn’t know her very well. Part of Tazrae wanted the children to be hers and hers alone. She wanted them to be the one thing in the world that she could claim as part of something she’d never truly had: Family. Kami had grown up knowing the entire clan. Nyle had as well. And Taz? She’d been whisked away to Syliras to grow up with an Aunt and Uncle that had lied to her every day of her life. Her ‘mother’ had resented her presence, and as soon as her ‘father’ had died of a blight induced illness, she’d moved on and arranged her life so there was truly no space in it for young Tazrae.
It was only years later, when Taz had successfully moved to Syka and started her own Inn, that her mother who was actually her aunt had confessed to a few truths and unburdened her dying mind. Tazrae’s mother – a woman who was still alive yet someone Tazrae had never met – was a war chief among the scattered Kois. Her clan was in full-fledged self-destruct mode due to her grandfather’s death and the years prior to that where he’d been held hostage by an ancient being that had inhabited his body. That creature had never had the Kois’ best interests at heart.
And as a result, Taz grew up apart from her Benshira culture. It was an increasing thing within her, like a knot forming, that she didn’t know the language or the culture. How often had she come upon Kami and Nyle’s home where they were speaking Shiber and only switched to Common when one or both of them realized Tazrae was excluded. There were dates that were sacred to the Benshira that Kami would demand the children be present for this ritual or that observance. Taz had stopped asking what they all meant. Half the explanation would come in Shiber when Kami’s Common failed her and that left Tazrae in the dark.
She’d been told a long time ago, at The Outpost, that she was the sentinel and the harbinger – a gatekeeper of sorts – that would allow the Kois Clan to escape from the desert and move to someplace more verdant. Syka, it was foretold, would be their destination. And Tazrae’s presence here was a sort of litmus test to see if one could survive or even thrive in a such a vastly different environment. Somehow, someway, she’d passed with flying colors and now they were starting to come. Her Inn was full of them recently – mostly family – and the talk of breaking ground, building homes, picking land. Once, she’d wanted that with a man. Then she’d been torn away, brutalized, and kept like a prize mare to be bred to the most eligible Kois stud until her stomach grew huge and her rage dimmed. Only when she escaped had she figured out that all she’d given towards the man she thought she’d loved hadn’t been reciprocated and he’d taken himself back to his shithole of a city rather than stay in paradise with her.
It didn’t matter. A long time ago someone had told her when a teacher was needed, one would be provided. Taz didn’t believe those words then. She less believed them now. So instead of actually waiting around for one to present itself, she decided to go in search of one. As much as she hated to admit it, it was past time… long past time… for Taz to revisit The Outpost and take a walk across the Open Sky Bazaar. She was tired of being a ‘listener’… one of those unseen unnecessary ghostly presences that people knew were there but never acknowledged. She was tired of being angry at what she had been deprived of as a child. Instead, she needed to take charge of the situation and rectify the loss. She needed to find a Benshira… one that spoke Common and Shiber perfectly. She needed one that would relocate to Syka. And she needed one that had no more energy to hate the Kois leadership. Taz was only the elder’s granddaughter. But she could skip the resentment if it was possible.
So she closed the Inn’s kitchen for the day, left notes and premade sandwiches, breads, and fruit, then headed out alone for The Outpost with a pocket full of coins to hopefully bribe her way into hiring a tutor.
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