[Flashback] Journey through the Grass (Closed)

[Aren]

Aren laughed at little Meera's avid curiosity. She reminded him of himself, when he was that age. The akalak decided to answer the drykas' first question, as the second had a rather boring reply. He didn't mind, anyway, as his Rite of Trial had been so long ago that only it's gruesomeness kept it in his memory. "It's a long story, but the short of it is that we interrupted one of their hunts, and became the hunted," Aren explained, realizing that the faces of the boys that died on that day were just blurs in his mind. "There were a few of us, somewhat older than you are right now, but still just boys and... well, I suppose that was the start of my run of bad luck with these squawking beasts," the akalak tried to recall the particulars, but he only remembered that the hunt was going fine at first, and then suddenly it wasn't. He would have to try harder if he wanted to remember any more details than that, but the truth was he really didn't care to. "I did manage to kill one, but I didn't escape from that fight with just a scratch on the cheek," Aren chuckled, amused by his own story. It had been a long time since he found cause to recall back that far, but he had two scars to remember that day by, making the trip down memory lane somewhat easier. "Of course, some years later I had to go zith hunting... and THAT was even worse," Aren smiled as he looked back at Meera, seeing if the bait had enticed her. "But, I suppose that's a story for another day," he teased, trying to provoke some sort of reaction out of the child.

[Meera]

Without realizing it, Meera had become tense in her yvas as she listened to Aren's story. It put pressure at Miss Filly's flanks and she picked up the pace again, putting her face directly beside Aren's.

"Tall like you!" She laughed when she realized it, and continued to listen to his story. Patros was glad that Aren did not seem offended in the slightest over the child's pestering.

"What Zith? Why?" Meera asked, looking to Patros for an explanation. "Why ... new?"

"Young, she means." Patros clarified. Meera corrected herself and asked again.

"You ... interrupted," she used Aren's word not sure entirely what it meant, "purpose? What... uhm... hurt? Where hurt?" Meera continued her barrage of questions. Patros tackled one of them.

"An Akalak has to kill a Glassbeak when they're fifteen or sixteen years old, Meera. It's uh, what you call it, a coming of age thing, right?" Though Patros knew the Akalak history well, he was not an Akalak himself nor their historian. He was bound to get intimate details wrong.

"Fifteen not young. Fifteen old. I six." Meera shared, exposing her missing two front teeth in a smile.. "Fifteen ... have ten years kill my glassbeak." Patros laughed. Meera would not be able to kill a Glassbeak on her own at fifteen, he knew without question. The Akalak's life was full of training to be in peak physical condition. Meera's was a life of riding horses and fletching bows.

[Aren]

"It's called the Rite of Trial. Just a fancy phrase for an ass-kicking waiting to happen, really," Aren had to admit that because of his own bitter experience, he might have been unjustly biased against the event... but he doubted it. The akalak were a dying race, so how was sending young children off to prove their strength helping the situation? So that the few that survived were strong? That sounded like something that should be put on hold until after their numbers recuperated, but what did he know. "Anyway, the glassbeak I killed left me this to remember it by," Aren put his hand on his left bicep to indicate the scar, "and... I got a hole in my leg from an off target arrow," he continued, adjusting the tale a bit, at the end. The arrow wound he had received had, in truth, not been caused by simple friendly fire, but by a much more insidious danger. The Other of one of his friends picked this particular moment to awaken, and the boy had not been able to fully control it then. It was a good thing he soon returned to his senses, or Aren might have met his end that very day, preventing the telling of this very story. "After that, I had to crawl my way back to Riverfall, praying to every god I knew that I wouldn't bleed out before I got there. In retrospect, since the arrow was still in my leg the whole way, I was probably more likely to die from encountering another glassbeak," Aren mused, slowly recalling bits and pieces of the event and relaying them as they came to him. He actually recalled wrong, however, as he had removed the arrow and bandaged the wound shortly thereafter. Memory was a funny thing, though.

[Meera]

Meera sat this time in silence, listening to Aren with rapt interest. He was so cool!! He was fifteen and killed his own glassbeak and had scars and stuff!! Even though fifteen was over twice her age, Meera recognized the strength he possessed. He was injured and bleeding and alone and he had to crawl back to wherever Riverfall was.

"Wow," She exclaimed softly. Aren was so cool...

"When does Zith happen?" She asked again suddenly, her Common starting to improve. Patros was right, being submerged in the language definitely helped her learn. Patros called out the proper word in Common she missed, and she repeated the correct question to Aren.

"What is Zith?" Patros gestured with his hands wings over his shoulder when Meera looked towards him, and Meera remembered with an "Oooh, bat person, yes."

Patros had told her of the bat people in efforts to scare her. If Meera was bad Patros would send her out into the Sea of Grass alone and Ziths would eat the skin off her bones with long, spindly fingers. They would boil her up and make her into a stew if she was rude to Sana one more time, and the boys in Endrykas said if she never got a windmark she would heavily beaten and molested by Ziths when she grew up. Meera had always thought of them as a "boogie man" type character, a fictional creature designed with the sole purpose of scaring children straight.

"They real?" She said with wide eyes of surprise. "And you kill Zith?" Where she might have felt fear before, knowing that Aren had killed a Zith made Meera feel insane amounts of better about being bad. If Patros ever fed her to a Zith, she would just kick them in the stomach when she was being digested and the Zith would spit her out.

[Aren]

"Oh, they're real alright... and they like to boil the blood of little girls for soup," Aren growled, trying to sound intimidating. After a few seconds of silence, however, he just laughed. "But like I said, that's a story for another time," the akalak teased, knowing he couldn't tell the most interesting stories of his life all in one sitting. There had to be time in between for a proper sense of anticipation to develop, or at least that's the way he saw it. The day had quickly caught up to them, as Aren just now noticed the setting sun, and he wondered if they should make camp. Drykas, as far as he knew, could not see in the dark, so that might, in fact, be a necessity. Of course, with some makeshift torches, they could always try to power through the night in an effort reach the road sooner. Both decisions carried an element of risk, either way. "Do you think we should stop for the night?" Aren asked, glancing back at Patros. This was his shindig, and the akalak would do whatever the drykas wanted. The old man seemed to have a good read on things up till now, so the blue skinned giant trusted his judgment.

[Meera]

"Can kill Zith too," Meera said defiantly at Aren's intimidating voice. "No boil." A smug grin crossed her mouth.
"Can do anything. Meera strong!" She posed on horseback, flexing her arms as though to display her many muscles that had yet to develop. Her smile quickly turned into a small polite yawn as they walked and silence grew between them.

Not before long, darkness had begun to fall over the Sea of Grass, and Aren inquired to the status of a camp.

"No, we carry on. Surely you're not too tired, Aren?" Patros teased with a hearty guffaw while horseback. He had never made camp if he could avoid it, but he had to remember that young Meera had a very long and exciting day.

The young waif yawned loudly as she was hunched over in her yvas, half-asleep already.

"Ah, perhaps it's best we make camp..." Patros said with a bit of defeat in his voice. Where they were was as good a place as any and Patros slowed his horse to dismount. Meera's horse, without any direction from Meera, had wandered off to graze at the grass. Meera leaned forward without the horse's neck to hold her up.

"I'm hungry..." She whispered, almost in a whine. She didn't call for Patros or Aren to help her down or feed her, she was used to not being served like a parent would normally do for their child. Meera was treated slightly better than slaves, so she knew her complaint would fall on deaf ears.

"Common, Meera. Come, dismount and let's make camp." A groan sounded from the little bundle on horseback. Patros was already unrolling the large tent as his horse took herself nearby to graze as well.

"Hungry," Meera said in a sighing voice. A huff and another groan told her guardian Meera was struggling to dismount and maintain her balance. Let her fall, he thought. He would not and could not help her. If she couldn't dismount a horse, how could she get her windmark? Meera disengaged herself from the yvas and jumped down, stumbling gently on her landing. Her bow and quiver were removed from her back and immediately she tore herself to the mare's saddlebag, to find herself some jerky to eat. She would yawn between bites.

[Aren]

Aren, of all people, recognized tough love when he saw it. He could see Patros' desire to go to her side and help her, and the effort it took to stop himself. The akalak had been raised on the stuff, so he was a bit of an expert on the subject, but he never once resented his parents for it. His life was going to be one full of peril, and they showed their love by giving him the tools he would need to survive. Aren didn't expect to find that humans sometimes raised their kids in the same way, mostly because he honestly didn't think they could take it. Perhaps they were tougher than he had previously believed, he thought. "I'll go gather something for the fire," the akalak said, leaving the two drykas to their preparations. The Sea of Grass, as the name implied, was a massive expanse of nothing but grassland, dotted by a few caves here and there. Grass made decent kindling, if it wasn't wet, and was as abundant as dirt in the plains. Aren, hastily ripping whole clumps of it from the ground, kept alert for any signs of trouble. After a few minutes, the akalak had gathered enough grass to start several fires, and promptly dropped the stuff in a pile by Patros. "I'll take the watch," he offered, out practicality if nothing else, seeing as he was the only one in the party who could see in the dark.

[Meera]

Meera gave aid to Patros, helping him pitch the tent and unroll the bedroll. By the time Aren had returned, Meera was passed out snoring lightly in the tent.

"Thank you," Patros said, chuckling lightly to himself over Meera. Patros gathered the grass into a small hole he had dug using a small shovel head. Happy with a small pile Patros turned to rifle through his pack for his flint and steel.

"Do you have any children, Aren?" Patros asked as his back was turned. "I had three boys." He hadn't even noticed he used the past tense.

"Meera's the first girl I've guarded. Took a lot of convincing Sana to let me take her. She's an orphan, so she doesn't really get the chance to do much in Endrykas." Patros continued, making conversation. He scooped around in his pack trying to find the flint, causing a lot of noise. Meera shifted in the tent.

[Aren]

"I don't believe so," Aren said, admitting that it could be a possibility, but he didn't actually know. The akalak noticed that Patros talked about his sons in the past tense, meaning they were likely all dead. The man probably thought of Meera as his own, and not simply as a ward to be taken care of. That's why he was so hard on her, why he wanted her to stand on her own two feet. "I think she'll be alright," Aren noted, not merely offering an empty platitude, but expressing his honest opinion. A good deal of that assertion had to do with Patros himself, whom the akalak recognized would do whatever was best for the little drykas, even if she would hate him for it. "I'm not as strong as you..." Aren idly commented, all too aware of his own shortcomings. His mind, he knew, was still weak. His hatred for glassbeaks was just one of many instances where that particular flaw came to the foreground. "Maybe one day," he added, absentmindedly, as he peered into the fading light. Aren figured that day was even farther off than the day he no longer hated glassbeaks. Smiling, he tried to imagine that moment, but simply could not.

[Meera]

"Child," he addressed Aren then, having felt older than the Akalak though it was totally impossible. "Strength is not something that truly can be measured overall. You are certainly stronger than me. I am old, my belly grows soft. You are still young in your race, strong and agile. You may have more physical strength than I but one cannot assume such maturity as well." Patros located his steel and turned to face him. He squatted by the pile of grass and struck the steel, where it instantly ignited a blade or two. Patros helped the spark by striking once again, and the fire was nearly born.

"You see, Aren, I noticed today how you fought. Meera, too. You stood in front of her arrow, did you not?" Patros asked rhetorically. "Perhaps that is why you have a scar on your leg. You take too much on to yourself, you lead too much. Sometimes it is needed, I saw how you were willing to protect a strange, insolent child such as Meera. That too is strength. It is courage, Aren." While the fire blazed on, Patros smiled as he built the fire with loose branch and leaves.

"One day you will grow up, Aren, and you will learn to share your burdens. Then you will be strong like me. Inner strength is knowing your weakness and learning from them, where as I will never again be strong like you. It is no wonder why you could fight glassbeaks so close and walk away with only a scratch." Patros joked, displaying how impressed he was, however stupid he thought the fight was. "And who knows? Maybe the perfume will help."