[Flashback]How to Meet a Dagger(Open)

[Alistair deGrey]

Alistair deGrey had two shadows. The sun, making its daily journey across the bleak Zeltivan sky, threw one of them. The other was composed of flesh, bone, and a great deal of annoyance. Both tracked deGrey to the treeline, persistent and silent.

The Zeltivan student remained keenly aware that this man still had not answered his question, but did not press the issue. It suited Alistair just fine, the longer this man plagued him, the farther he would walk back to Zeltiva. Of course, what if he followed... Impossible, he has no motive to do so.

It was not difficult to blot out the new object, deGrey simply kept his iron eyes affixed forward and pressed on. He had not caught the stranger's ire, his insensitivity to others showing like sunshine in summer. If he had been aware of his shadow's irritation, Alistair might have paid more attention to the nuisance. Paying more attention essentially meant spending more time getting him to leave. As volatile as deGrey was, he tried to keep a facade of calm, and thought everybody else should too. Therefore, angry people displeased him. But Alistair deGrey remained oblivious.

The mute pair arrived at the spot where the great ape had burst from the trees, having traced an arc across the field. Death hung limply in the air, hanging from trees like moss, or a strung carcass. The stench cared not to conceal itself, and Alistair traced it to its source a few yards away. Raccoons, or possums, or foxes, or something,.. A few dead corpses littered a small clearing.

Alistair wrinkled his nose and stopped, calmly examining the scene, drawing the connections. It was clear to him now what had caused the Jamoura's ire, even though he felt no great outrage at the death of the animals. It was lamentable, however, that the remaining goods were wasted. deGrey, however, had no experience in the harvesting of such goods. Alistair addressed the Second Shadow when he arrived, keeping his gaze fixed on the corpses before him, "Shadow, have you any experience in matters of woodland harvesting? I doubt the meat could be salvaged, but what of the..." deGrey pondered the proposal for a second, "What of other resources, might we make use of them?" He shrugged, a sign of his naivety. Perhaps we might harvest the... The bones? Though Alistair did not imagine bones would be of much use to him.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian stopped too, irritation momentarily forgotten. The scene they surveyed made his nose wrinkle. Of course, he had dissected animals before under the observation of a tutor to learn more about the natural sciences, but this did seem wasteful. From what he understood about the frequent food shortages in Zeltiva, wasting meat seemed, in fact, criminal.

"I don't know shyke about outdoorsmanship," he said, with youth's propensity for unnecessary profanity. He was, after all, a fresh-faced seventeen and pretending to be an adult for the likes of the University. "But if this is illegal, why were they so stupid as to do it this close to the City?"

The flashes of pain and death lingering in the spot hurt his augmented vision, so he let it dissipate with relief. His head ached a little from the shared pain and from the first touches of overgiving. He was like a child with a new toy, given glasses to see through walls or somesuch nonsense.

"I suppose someone might want to carve the bones or something... Or use the bones for the marrow to cook, but I don't know anything about that either."

[Alistair deGrey]

Before now, Alistair had not noticed exactly how young his counterpart was. Now, as he spoke, deGrey turned to examine him matter of factly. He was young, several years deGrey's junior at least. Yet he had the look of the pampered about him. He was essentially everything Alistair was not. Odd how the shadow was so clearly more fulfilled.

deGrey's mouth twisted to one side, as he contemplated Shadow's words. After the boy's short spiel, proclaiming his ignorance, Alistair spoke, "It isn't illegal. Logically, this is a cultural difference. What is legal here, probably is not where the Jamoura live." deGrey could not recall the name of the place at the time, so he left it a bit ambiguous. "As well, though Zeltiva must be attractive to the Jamoura, I still do not see many around. So I doubt they'd know all of our laws." Alistair couldn't help himself, and added, "It is wondrous, what one might accomplish when they apply logic, as opposed to prepubescent curses."

Alas, neither of them had any proficiency in the extraction of animal resources, so deGrey forged onward. He carefully picked his path across the clearing, giving the bodies a wide berth. "These ones need an undertaker, not a hunter. I doubt anything could be had in any case, except for the bones."

On the other side of the clearing, deGrey set off again, making his way down the not so subtle trail the trackers had taken. He had no real wilderness training, and could not tell a deer track from an elk track. However, the trappers had taken no pains to conceal their route once they had a full haul, leaving a veritable path of trampled undergrowth. Indubitably it had been a game trail, these men had simply expanded it.

Alistair reconsidered the benefits of allowing Shadow along, perhaps he was not an entire nuisance after all. Especially if we encounter bears. He would make for good fodder.

[Hadrian]

When the man started speaking to Hadrian like a human being, he was respectful enough, listening and taking his words into consideration. He even made a mental note to ask his anthropology professor about this incident as he really didn't know all that much about Jamoura.

But then the man made his snide comment, and Hadrian just rolled his eyes. The man seemed intelligent, though, and educated, so that earned him points in Hadrian's book. He followed. What else was he going to do.

"No undertaker. Nature will take care of itself. It's a small enough tragedy if you look at how big the system is. The ecosystem of Zeltiva. Scavengers or predators will eat them, and the energy will remain in the cycle. It'll just be more difficult for humans to reclaim that energy."

Why was he in the wilderness? He hated the wilderness. There were bugs and things. Damn it.

[Alistair deGrey]

"I would have expected my Shadow to be a bit more astute in his interpretations." deGrey pushed back a high branch that crossed the trapper's path, but did not bother to hold it for Shadow. "Nature is the human undertaker's model." His eyes were affixed to the ground as he navigated his way along the path, which for an experienced woodsman would have taken little thought. However, Alistair was anything but.

The two came to a small creek, their path orthogonal to it. There was no bridge, but a path, more worn than the one the pair had just exited, ran alongside it. Alistair looked in either direction, not having planned this far out. In fact, he had not planned anything past the treeline. deGrey spoke again, his voice completely calm, "Also, you confuse energy and matter." That was not exactly what he wanted to say, and Alistair hoped that Shadow did not press the issue, because he was just delving into efficiency, work, and energy at the university. Alistair continued, "Now, Shadow, why do you not choose the path this time."

deGrey gestured down either path, his facade completely neutral.

[Hadrian]

After ducking under the branch, Hadrian peered curiously at the man.

"Nature is no model for an undertaker. Undertakers embalm and dress up death for the comfort of the living. Nature reduces a person's unused flesh to usable matter and energy, to further life. And I don't confuse energy and matter, you just refuse to follow my line of thought."

Whereas a normal person might have been affronted by Alistair's behavior, Hadrian took it in stride. Like he was a mental exercise.

"Where do you want to go?"

[Alistair deGrey]

The paths stretched before them, and deGrey glanced at Hadrian with a look of impatience. Had he not just asked the boy to choose? "If I had a preference, I would not have left the decision to you." Though the concepts of mundania slipped through Alistair's grasp often enough, he expected most people to be different. Perhaps this one was not.

"Undertakers dispose of the dead, Shadow. You leave out other details with your explanation, it is flawed. Nature also disposes of the dead. Undertakers follow natures model, but also include societal reasons. First of all, they deal with the dead to further life. Second, the societal reason, is because of our superstitions regarding the afterlife. Funeral rites and such. That is unecessary and arbitrary though. It all stems from furthering life." Alistair hoped he had made sense. The idea sounded logical to him when he thought of it in his brain, but he was unsure how clearly he had transmitted the idea. deGrey just hoped this child wasn't an anthropologist. "Do you understand? Nature embodies every necessary function of society in a different manner, because at a fundamental level, we designed our world after nature's ecology." deGrey internally groaned, hoping he did not have to defend that hypothesis. Perhaps he should have read more anthropology books before making these inferences. To top that off, he was still not sure Shadow understood him.

[Hadrian]

"Your arguments are arbitrary," Hadrian replied, without rancor, "and your suppositions are only one perspective, but the ideas could be argued from several." He shrugged and pointed out a direction to the man. "Go that way."

Whichever way the man chose to go, following Hadrian's directive or choosing the opposite, he considered going whichever way the man did not, or even back the way he had come. There was a Jamoura going, for lack of a better word, ape-shyke, and he might pick up more details to share with his professor for future discussion.

He was growing bored. The man seemed to him to be traveling, metaphorically, in a dangerous direction. He spoke with such surety of his own convictions, which Hadrian could respect on the one hand, but on another he seemed to be the type of scholar who was so sure of his own ideas that he became blind to information that contradicted his hypotheses or other ideas that might lead to more innovative thought.

Oh well, he thought. Life was full of little disappointments.

[Alistair deGrey]

Alistair deGrey wrinkled his nose as he realized what he had been doing. Arguing for the sake of argument was not the most prudent idea, especially if one did not hold the idea close to one's heart. Alistair did not care about this topic at all. Not only did he have no expertise in it, but it was uninteresting.

Despite this, deGrey would not admit to Shadow that he had only just now realized where he was going. "I believe we have reached a breakdown in communication. I do not care at all for the topic, these are not my arguments, they are simply arguments. I apologise if I have insinuated interest. Of course the topic could be argued from many perspectives, I just walked down the first path that presented itself." Alistair was on the brink of adding that he had no formal training in anthropology, but decided that Shadow would understand the implications of deGrey's speech.

Alistair turned and walked back the way they had came, "Farewell Shadow, I do hope we meet under more interesting circumstances. Perhaps you may tell me what lies down that path." The conversation had staled, and now he recalled that he was not supposed to like Shadow. He would backtrack to the treeline and take a different route.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian watched the man go, uncertain how to take him. Perhaps they would meet again. If he was a scholarly sort as he seemed, they might cross paths at the University. He hoped if they discussed something in the future, it was something more interesting.

He waited a while, kicking a rock and glaring at insects that he didn't want to land on him, and then started back the way they had come and, incidentally, the way Alistair had gone. Playing shadow was no longer his goal, but if there was anything to see on the field of battle, he would check that out before going to the library to see if that cute librarian was working.