[GS Flashback] Everybody Hurts [Rista]

[Victor Lark]

HD

10 Summer, 509

“Hey, come here,” Aemid said, grabbing Rista by the arm as if he had asked first. His brother stood beside him—no, behind him, with a curious glare on his gold-green eyes. Where Aodas could not bring himself to look directly the blackened eyes of his fellow yasi, Aemid’s matching pair were not as modest. Mischief danced on the grin that lifted only one side of his mouth, and there was an affect of pride on the gaze that met Rista’s. “What do you say we get out of here, and actually learn something?”

It was the sort of overcast day that allowed the inarta to forego their furs and bathe in the cool breezes of their brief Spring. The weather begged for an outdoor class, and so it was granted in the form of inspecting the land’s new bloom. Their instructor toiled ahead, muttering on about the native plants of the mountainside, how to identify them and how to prepare them for a stew or a medicine bottle. Behind him, slow-moving students feathered out like an eagle’s tail, each of their heads bent towards the ground. They scoured the grey rocks and young grasses for one particular herb, a different name and description assigned to each of them to test their ability to discern and identify. Aemid had been dutifully doing just that, until his brother had pulled up his eyes and muttered something to him. Without a moment’s hesitation, he had scanned the group thoughtfully before singling out the half-blood and approaching her suddenly.

“This whole class is easy and useless,” he explained, his open palm bobbing beneath his crouching chest. “We need a challenge, if we’re ever going to be good at anything.” His hand swept towards their peers and the adult just beyond; the procession had already advanced far enough to put the trio at its back. If Rista followed Aemid’s glance towards the rest, she might notice the thin, green-eyed youth that looked back at them with the slightest scowl painted over his usual poise. The boy at her side swallowed. A flash of discomfort moved over his face, but when he regarded her again, he was smiling.

Aodas stared at a rock at her feet intently, as if it might somehow sprout the very herb he had been assigned. If he had not already been shoved from his grasp on her peculiarly dark arm, Aemid let go of her then. He seemed to realize that his gestures might draw suspicion, so he stuffed his hands in his pockets and straightened.

“Aodas and I, we were thinking that, you know, someone like you could be useful in our little expedition. You could join us...” Aodas dropped his arms from where they had been folded over his chest and looked up at the metal between her eyes, his jaw tight but his eyes expectant. The talking boy shrugged and turned away, eyeing his brother in a suggestion to do the same. A look of confusion heralded Aodas’s reluctant acquiescence. They walked a perpendicular path to the group’s progress, Aemid’s brow bent under the pretense of observing for vegetation and Aodas’s glancing angrily back at Rista. The former spoke just loud enough for her to hear, “...unless you’re afraid.”

[Rista]

She was jerked to a halt by the unexpected grip on her arm and looked up with a frown covering the face. Surprise shifted swiftly into wary suspicion as the girl saw who it was that stopped her, the expression on her face darkening as she heard the suggestion that was thrown at her. This couldn't be good. That grin, the mischievous look on the face of the twin, and the looming shadow of the brother behind him... Rista jerked her arm loose from Aemid's grip and turned towards the grinning boy, momentarily pushing the task of gathering herbs to the back of her mind. "You mean to say that you know more than the Avora about herbs?" she asked sceptically and folded copper-toned arms over the vinati covered chest. "It's boring alright with the way he just keeps talking and talking, but unless you have something better then I see no reason to act stupid and do the exact opposite of what we've been told." The mongrel made a brief nod towards the absent-minded teacher, who that very same morning had held a long and yawn-inspiring speech on how they weren't supposed to go off on their own or stray too far from the group. Following his gaze without really noticing who it was that caused the uneasy reaction, the black-haired girl soon returned her attention to the twins and met their gaze with brazen black eyes, almost challenging them to look at her with the way she stared back. There was very little about the two slightly older yasi that inspired trust in her. Rista knew the two to be close to the top ranks of their caste, Aodas with his soon-to-be apprenticeship and Aemid with that smooth tongue of his. They were both popular, especially with the girl, but for Rista their attention was both unwanted and dangerous. If the female half of the yasi began to think that she was getting along too well with the twins there would be no end to the bickering and harassment that would follow. It was bad enough that Rista had been handed a vinati earlier than most other girls her age, her low status as half-breed and cocky attitude also made her into free game for anyone that felt like taking their frustration out on someone else. Somewhere behind the dry reasoning that she voiced however, a faint spark of interest had been lit upon the suggestion to sneak off. The hint that she was specifically invited was shrugged off as nothing more than cheap flattery and smooth-talking. She knew how it would be, Rista would be put on doing all the things the twins didn't want to do; she would get to tag along for the dirty grunt work, the heavy and sweaty things that actually required some effort to be put in. It wasn't that which lit a spark in her eyes. Neither was it the wry grin of the red-haired boy, even if it was well so charming - Rista thought herself immune to that kind of thing, especially after what had happened the past winter. No, it was the way he had called it a challenge that made a curious desire rise, to know what Aemid had in mind... The dare he finally threw at her all but made the decision for her. Lips pressed tightly together as she moved, pace quickening until she fell in beside the two boys, her short stature making them tower over her even though they hadn't reached their full height yet. The girl looked stubborn as she flicked a strand of hair from her eyes and glared between the brothers, blaming Aodas as much as the talkative twin for the insult. How dared they question her courage? It stung at her pride, making it impossible to ignore even though it would have been wiser. "You think I'm afraid of a measly old teacher?" she quipped quietly and followed the example of the teasing kid to avoid detection, her eyes gliding over the ground without really looking for the plant she was supposed to find. "I'm not scared Aemid, not of you or your mute mocking bird of a brother and certainly not of him. Still, this better be good..." It wasn't an entirely empty threat that was left trailing behind the words. Rista was a notorious fighter, and if she was only given decent odds she never hesitated to take on opponents that was much bigger than herself. Sometimes she even won, to the eternal humiliation of the loser.

[Victor Lark]

Aodas did not notice how his brother smiled at their success. He looked up when he heard Rista’s retort; the dumb look on his face did not match the speed at which he punched her in the arm and replied, “I’m not a mockingbird, you cow-eyed freak.”

Aemid stopped from where he had taken the lead. He looked back at her as the other boy huffed towards and beyond him, kicking gravel as he went. His mouth hung with some calming word or chastisement for his brother, but he decided against it. His eyes lowered to idly scrutinize her bare abdomen before they turned up towards their oblivious instructor, who was slowly guiding his class down a shallow incline on the other side of a rocky hill. A short girl, her wild curls tied up in a sloppy bun, looked back at him with a patient smile. She waved that he join her, ignoring his company entirely. He lifted a hand at her and returned her smile. The expression dropped only barely when his attention fell again to the half-blood.

“Quickly, now,” he mumbled, then jogged toward Aodas. The balls of his feet flitted against the ground with a careful quiet. Though hardly noiseless, they suggested that she take the same caution. When he caught up to him, he wrapped his fingers around his brother’s wrist and pulled him behind the largest in a composite of boulders, gesturing impatiently that Rista follow.

“I know plenty about herbs,” he finally said, “And if you really want, we can keep looking for silly gillyweeds and powder puffs as we go. But we could explore the mountain, figure out the land. We could hunt or set up a trap and then they wouldn’t even mind, if we came back with a meal.”

“I could catch a lop,” the other twin suggested.

“No, Aodas.” Aemid pushed puckishly at his brother’s shoulder. “You could catch an elk.”

The quiet one folded his arms and let his attention wander carefully to Rista, to check and see what she thought. Ever the pragmatist, he finally squirmed and mentioned, “Can’t catch elk without a bow.”

Aemid suppressed a laugh. “That’s not the point, is it?” Aodas frowned. He was staring at Rista’s eye-piercings again, and not at her eyes. Aemid followed his twin’s gaze, but he managed to grin at her without focusing on any one piece of her face. “We could outsmart an elk, don’t you think? I heard once about tiring it out and cornering it. Your kind does that all the time, right? With desert lizards, or whatever it is.” He glanced beyond the boulder, but he could still see the heads of stragglers and that girl’s expectant search. He rolled his eyes and leaned against the rock again.

“What do you say?” He whispered heartily, “How would you catch an elk?”

[Rista]

Aodas' fist connected to her arm and sent a dull ache through the limb, the punch not excruciating but still hard enough to make the smaller girl sidestep to keep her balance. Her fist clenched and the black eyes flared at the insult and the attack, muscles tensing as she prepared to retort with the same treatment. The backwards glance from Aemid however, followed by the look up towards the other yasi somehow managed to put a lid on the seething emotions within. If she started a fight they would be discovered, and the chance of slipping away would be reduced to null... Very reluctantly Rista swallowed her anger, and settled with giving the quiet boy a dark glare that promised more than hard words if he repeated that action again. Even as she followed the two brothers along and hunched down behind the boulders the girl was beginning to regret this decision of hers. What was the point in going on adventures if she didn't appreciate her companions? Her face remained wary and suspicious as she listened to the discussion between the twins, and grew harder when Aemid threw the hint towards her about desert people and lizards. Was that meant as an insult? The short girl forced herself to take a deep breath before she replied, the skin between her shoulders itching from a desire to punch the pale-haired youth in the face. "How am I supposed to know about that" she said grimly and pinned the other beneath her black eyes. "If your memory hasn't suddenly become like an Elders, then you should already know that I've never been to a desert in my life. Or did you conveniently forget that we lived in the same nursery for six years before the two of you turned Yasi?" There was venom in her voice as she spoke. It seemed like it was impossible for her to hide her annoyance over constantly having her mixed heritage brought up, just as impossible as it was to simply let the matter go unnoticed. "As for catching an elk, do you really think we're going to find one in the first place? I heard some Chiet talk a while ago, they said that the hunters have to go further and further away from the Reach to find game nowadays. Unless you're planning to sprout wings like an Eagle and fly us down the mountain, there's no way we're going to catch anything but a lop, and that only if we're lucky." The young girl pulled her legs up closer to herself and pressed the back against the boulder to keep herself upright, the arms folding across her chest as if to enhance her point. Black tresses framed the copper-skinned face and deepened the shadows of her eyes as she looked between the older boys, expecting them to come up with a better suggestion than that. She wasn't backing out, not yet, but it was clear that she wasn't impressed by the poor suggestions. Rista wasn't easily swayed by optimism and 'what-ifs', she was far too practical and serious to be dragged along by anything but a rational, carefully thought through plan. She needed at least a faint chance of success to find a suggestion interesting, and then it could be a well thought of prank or a seriously intended solution to a problem in class. Allowing her gaze to trail away from the twins for a moment she looked away from the group of kids and peered down the slope, searching for ideas on what to do. She had swallowed the idea of going off on their own already, and had been somewhat sated by the promise to go through with their assigned tasks. Now she wanted a good reason for their disobedience, so that they had at least a good explanation to come with once it was discovered that they had trailed away from the group. "Hey, what about this" she said after a while and nudged the shoulder of Aemid before pointing down the hill. "There seems to be a creek or spring flowing down there, see where the grass is darker green? If we follow that downhill, I bet we'll find some traces of animals sooner or later. Perhaps not an elk, but we might find a couple of lops or maybe even a fox." Rista looked between the brothers with a raised eyebrow, trying to gauge what they thought of the suggestion. It didn't sound nearly as exciting as catching a deer with their bare hands, but far more plausible. They could try tracking, and perhaps even manage to set some snares... The idea of returning with extra food to supplement Chef Davoid's soup was very tempting.

[Victor Lark]

Aemid rolled his eyes. When his gaze landed on his brother, his sigh of mock-frustration had lighted into a smile. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Well what do I know?” He said, not quite angrily enough. “I’m not the hunter!” Aodas’s mouth did not rise from his begrudging frown, but he turned his attention quickly enough from the smug boy beside him to Rista’s copper-toned nose. It took a nudge from Aemid’s elbow to persuade him to speak.

“That’s a good idea,” he said. “Animals go to and from there all the time. Even if they aren’t there, we could track ‘em from there. Foxes are slippery, though, and no good for meat. Lops are easy. Wouldn’t go far.”

Aemid bit the inside of his lip and shrugged, looking away at the indiscernible distance. “You two don’t know what a joke is. Of course we can’t catch an elk. And everyone knows Rista’s never met her savage of a sire. Ow!”

Aodas withdrew from the punch with his fist still clenched. “Neither have we ours,” he asserted, glaring. Aemid’s smile suddenly became tight. He looked distractedly in the direction Rista had suggested. He looked like he wanted to say something about his purer heritage, or at least complain about the tedium in their idea, but then his eyes strayed to his older brother and he sighed. Aodas glanced at Rista for an instant, then he shuffled ahead of them and towards the water. His brother skipped backward to confirm the trio was safely out of eyes’ reach, then followed after. His expression had fallen to something like concentration; his head pivoted on his shoulders as if he were trying to memorize the surroundings.

The rocky terrain became slimy with moss and moisture and thick grass. It moved easier beneath their boots, grinding noisily even under the lightest steps. Aodas would never be first to break the silence. Before they had even neared the creek, Aemid said, “You should go for the fox.” He leaned sideward against his brother, pushing him off course. Aodas looked up at Aemid just in time to watch him throw a grinning glance at the girl. Aodas paled, and Aemid added, “There’s the challenge.”

“The... we could... even for foxes, traps aren’t a good idea,” Aodas stuttered, staring forward. His hands were stiff; he wanted to punch his brother again, but for some reason was restraining himself. “Um, the only traps we could make are the ones you have to, you know, sit around and wait with.” He paused to crouch and run his hands over the damp grass and the rocks between. He picked one up and tossed it back, having barely considered it. “We probably can’t make any of these into weapons...”

[Rista]

Annoyance flashed over her visage at the condescending tone the talkative twin had. Rista balled her fists tightly and looked between the brothers, silently rethinking this decision of hers to tag along. Would she have to put up with this attitude when it was them that had dragged her along? To be correct, Aemid had made her join. The quieter of the twins didn't seem to be entirely up to this either, and Rista found to her own surprise that she listened more to his words when he actually said something than to the yapping of the other. She was even more surprised to hear that Aodas agreed with her suggestion. That was unexpected... Turning around to peer down the slope towards the creek, only paying attention to the talking of the other two with half an ear. She did hear the pass on her sire though, and had halfway turned around with a fist ready to strike when the loose-tongued boy was quieted, though not by her punch. Rista found herself gaping at Aodas, her dark eyes looking at him in shock; had he actually defended her? No, it has to be her imagination, there was no way he would lash out at his twin because of her, especially not for her. Right? She lingered for a moment and regarded the pair silently as they began to move away from the boulders, thoughts swirling through her mind. Some things never happened, and people being nice to her for no reason was one of them. It was strange that Aodas had reacted like he did, but perhaps it was because of something else. That had to be the case. Gnawing quietly on her lip the dark-haired girl pushed a stray lock away from her eyes and forced her body to move, soon enough catching up with the older boys. She kept her eyes on the ground for the most part, scouring the area for signs of animal tracks, touts of hair or droppings. A few broken twigs on a low bush made her pause and hunch over, carefully examining them while keeping an eye on the boys at the corners of her eyes. She had to admit, they seemed pretty close to one another. It made her jealous, more than she wanted to admit. Rista had also shared a bond like that once, where a touch and a glance said more than a long sentence, where words rarely were necessary to know what was up with the other. A pang of sadness spread through her chest and made it hard to breathe, she turned her gaze towards the ground again, staring at a peculiar patch of earth. How she missed her brother, even after all these years. It took several moments before she even bothered to consider what it was about the ground that was strange, and when she finally did it was almost enough to make her laugh to herself. It was a paw print, nearly perfect in the moist ground and couldn't have been made very long ago. Rista tried to compare it with her hand, noticing the size of the print and number of claws before moving her eyes forward, trying to discern more prints and get a feeling for the direction in which the animal must have headed. The ground was slightly rocky and made it hard to follow the tracks for very long at a time, but as she moved along and came closer to the creek they grew more numerous, scurrying up and down the stream. It was clear that there had been something there quite recently, probably startled away by the sound of children's voices from up the hill. The girl turned around to see where the brothers had gone off to, intending to whistle at them and get their attention if they were far. Aodas might be able to get more out of this than she could, Rista assumed that his tracking skills were quite good if he was training under a hunter.

[Victor Lark]

Aemid was muttering some trivial thing in Aodas’s ear when he was stopped suddenly by his brother’s firm hand against his chest. If it were anyone else, Aemid might have balked, but he only bit his tongue compliantly as Aodas stood from where he crouched. They both watched silently as Rista approached the creek, her eyes intent on the ground. The hunter’s apprentice knew better than to disturb her progress, for risk of distracting her as well as alerting the prey that might be lurking nearby, but Aemid could not know.

“What do you see?” He called out, and the thin air seemed to throw his voice in every direction. He grunted when Aodas punched him in the small of the chest, then looked wearily ahead at the girl. The elder boy had found his element, and could easily take the lead without the tedium of Aemid’s clever conversation to annoy him. His eyes were tied to the ground around Rista’s feet; when he finally realized that he could not identify the tracks from a distance, he stepped slowly and carefully towards her. We should not be out in the open, his wary eyes said as they scanned the land beneath a frowning brow. They stopped at every collection of rocks and grasses, yearning for a place to hide. His brother followed closely behind, lighter on his feet but lesser in his care.

Aodas might have stood too close to Rista when he finally stopped and answered in a whisper, “Goats. Fresh. Probably heard us.” Aemid stood afar with an accusing glare trained on the girl, she who had made less noise than he. Aodas was oblivious to the exchange, his attention on the creek. When he pointed to the soft, water-kissed soil, his arm brushed hers. “And, look. Godwits. They should’a left by now, for Summer. Bet they went up the mountain. That’d be a sight.”

There was a rustle in the tall grasses by the slow-moving water, distracting him from the prospect. Both heads instantly turned to it. Aemid managed to say, “Aodas—” before he punched him again.

The hunter’s apprentice stepped away from Rista, arms spread for balance and spine hunched at the ready. He hit her arm barely with the back of his hand, to show that he was speaking to her, and hissed, “If I don’t catch it, grab it and break its neck.”

Slowly, crouching, he rounded the large patch of grass, which emitted no other sound even as the soft shk… shk... shk... of the boy’s boots moved a wide arc around it. Honest care marked his movements, but even an untrained eye could tell how he failed to mimic his master’s artful poise and meticulous precision. Aemid leaned back on his heels, folded his arms, rolled his eyes. His brother glanced back at his accomplices every so often, but from that distance, any reason or sentiment could not be told. Then, finally, Aodas found the other side of the river. He paused, peering.

And then sudden alacrity propelled him forward, pouncing like a predator through lines of young green. A cloud of buzzing insects rose around him, but he took no heed as he chased after the stirred mammal at his toes: his fingers seemed just too short to reach the fluffy white tail of a blond lop as it skirted out from between the reeds and darted towards his fellow yasi.

[Rista]

Her eyes turned briefly from the tracks on the ground as she heard Aemid call out and frowned lightly at the loudness of his voice. Not much of a hunter that one, not with his loud scramble for footing and obvious lack of understanding for when it was good to b quiet. Rista watched the two brothers make their way over to her and returned her attention to the soggy ground, paying little heed to the exchange of blows between the boys and instead trying to decipher the jumbled and sometimes unclear prints in the soil. There had been many animals passing by there lately and her eyes weren't trained enough to easily make out which way they had been headed. Rista flinched slightly when Aodas appeared by her side and shifted slightly, trying to inch to the side just a little so he wouldn't be so close. There was something slightly annoying with the way she could feel the heat of his body radiate towards her, and it was hard to not jerk the arm away as it was brushed against by the quiet youngster. Trying hard to swallow down the sense of unease she focused on his voice and followed the path of his finger with her eyes, nodding and storing the information at the back of her mind for later reviewing. Unpleasant as he might be, Aodas still was a hunter apprentice and it seemed like he actually had the position for a reason. The dark-haired girl gave him a long sideways glance that clearly tried to weigh this new realization in with her impressions of him, but as Aemid tried to speak again and the blond twin returned the attempt with a no-nonsense punch the mongrel pursed her lips in mild dislike. No, there was very little to reconsider there. The guy was still a dumb brute and no amount of tracking abilities would change that, just as her opinion wasn't likely to be changed just because he refrained from trash talking her for once. Some things never changed. A rustle in the grass up ahead snapped the half-breed back to reality and with the heard suddenly ponding in the chest she nodded briefly at the suggestion of the boy. It was hard not to smirk as she saw Aodas move around to the other side, his lack of deadly elegance brought her mind to a young crane still without full control of its limbs. He was silent though which was good. Rista shifted where she crouched, pulled the legs up under herself and waited with her chest pounding hard from excitement, a faint grin spreading over her lips. She was quick to react when Aodas pounced the source of the shifting vegetation and stirred up a lop, Rista pushed herself up on her feet and locked the eyes on the running animal. As it came towards her she spread the fingers wide on her hands, without hesitation flinging herself towards the little rodent and reached for it, desperately trying to latch her digits around the fast little creature. The girl plummeted to the ground with a force that pressed the air from her chest, a rock smacked painfully against her ribs and made her wince as black dots began to dance before her eyes. Her closing fingers caught a hold of one of the hind legs of the lop, just barely holding it down as it began to kick and wrestle furiously to get loose. "Hurry, catch it, catch it!" she wheezed and struggled to move the animal closer despite the pain in her side, her fingers threatening to slip over the soft fur of the paw. She couldn't see if anyone was coming to help her, it was all she could do at the moment to hold on the the kicking and clawing animal - had she known that lops had so sharp claws? No she hadn't, and the kicking of the free foot surprised her with leaving furious red gashes along her wrist that stung and burned the skin. "I'm loosing it, where the petch are you!?" Her fingers slipped on the paw, couldn't hold on any longer and with a meaty curse the girl felt how the little rabbit managed to wrestle loose and slipped from her grip. Once again she reached for it and felt the wool of the tail under her fingertips, the little yasi saw how the lop managed to get its feet under itself and leaped off, well out of reach for herself or any of the young men that might come running after it. Rista cursed again and winced as she pushed herself up on her knees, hands brushing gravel and dirt away from her bare skin and the vinati, grudgingly trying to avoid a spot on her ribcage where a bruise already had begun to form.

[Victor Lark]

Aemid did not know how to react. He had been standing beside her, exuding resentment with the hands that gripped his own crossed arms and the scowl that twisted up between his eyebrows; he hated his brother for entrusting the girl with the task of rabbit-killing and he hated her for taking it seriously, crouching and staring like that. He had been so consumed in those petty hatreds that he forgot the purpose of his own scheme. When the time came to react, he panicked. Carving deep grooves in the soil beneath his feet, he had been torn between throwing himself at their prey and leaving Rista room to do the same. In the end, he fell on his rear and was no use to anyone.

Aodas knew exactly what to do. He knew how to step, how to lean forward with proper balance, how to make his target swerve with noise and when he finally caught the thing, how to kill it. He knew how, but his body did not seem to have the capacity to cooperate with his mind. In his haste, he misjudged the grip of the soil and tripped over himself. He choked a groan as he pushed himself up, but the soil pulled back with a triumphant slurp and he pressed deeper before he could rise again. “Rista!” He cried furiously, because he could think of no other way to make her hold onto it. But by the time he reached her, the thing was gone.

“You let it get away!” He roared through his teeth, as if she were not already aware. As soon as he neared her, he hit her hard on the back of her shoulder; he raised his hand against her again, but it paused in midair and he growled his restraint. There were fists on each hand when his arms came back to his sides and he paced away. Aemid tripped to his feet and dusted the dirt from his knees and elbows, making sure Rista saw him smirk before he trotted after his storming brother.

“I told her to catch it,” Aodas mumbled as Aemid neared. He did not bother to look around and see whether Rista followed.

“I know, brother, but she couldn’t.” Aemid patted the other boy’s back, and managed not to flinch when edgy Aodas jumped with surprise. He added, “You’ll catch the next one.”

The sullen twin mumbled something under his breath, and the calmer one looked toward Rista. The smile on Aemid’s face was one of triumph in pettiness, and the pride of it dripped from his tongue as he called back to her, “We’re going to follow the river up the mountain. Keep an eye out and stay quiet, you hear?” Aodas shuffled away from him then, both frustrated at the hypocrisy of yelling such a statement and unable to voice his displeasure. Aemid seemed content to let him be, staying a few steps behind so that his brother could lead the way. He fell into line beside Rista to add snidely, “That is, if you still think you’ll be of any use!”

[Rista]

She had begun to rise back up on her feet when the blow landed on her shoulders, Aodas fist heavy enough to push the small girl back on her knees with a huff as the air was pressed from her lungs once more. Her palms pressed deeply into the waterlogged ground, and with black dots still dancing before her eyes the yasi reacted without thinking, wordless anger sending a leg out in a sweeping motion towards the knee of the older boy, blind and uncaring as to whether the kick landed or not. How dared he accuse her for no reason! Her failure was eating at her already, there was no reason to rub it in or make such a fuss about it. It was hard to catch lops, even more so with such poor planning and lack of equipment. "I didn't see you catch it either!" she hissed and stumbled up, making sure to place enough distance between herself and the blond boy - that was enough of hitting, once more and she wouldn't let it pass without retribution. Dark eyes glared at the two as they passed, and the frown deepened as she saw the smirk Aemid gave her. Why had she agreed to this again? Whatever reason she'd had, it hadn't been good enough by far. Next time anyone asked her to come along on anything she was going to flat out refuse, no doubt about that. Rista brushed her soggy hands off on the bryda and grimly followed after the boys, regretting her decision to follow them but at the same time unwilling to return to the group. They were likely to discover that some had gone missing soon, and as much as she disliked the twins she wasn't a tattle-tail that would tell on them either. Not to mention that she would get in trouble as well... Better to share the blame with older yasi that could take the brunt of the scolding for dragging her off without permission. Keeping a bit of distance to Aodas, the girl rubbed the sore spot on her ribs as she walked, and gave Aemid a sour glare as he fell back to her side. The smugness of his grin was annoying, even more so than the chiding comments - she snorted and took her eyes off him, deeming him of too little threat to even bother looking at. "I won't take that from someone who fell on his butt when faced with nothing but a lop" she said and rounded a rock that obstructed her path. "Why don't you try to be of some use yourself first, before giving me advice on how to do? If I recall correctly, you didn't even touch the pray, not to mention that you didn't find the tracks, nor were you of any help with all that shouting you were doing either. I can't help but feel that you are pretty useless out here, Aemid. Can that be true?" The tone of her voice was mild, but there was a bite to the words and the quick glance she gave him was cool and condescending, as unimpressed as it could get.