[Bronze Woods] Into the Woods (Rythern & Sam)

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

29th Spring, 510 A.V.

"Don't eat the figs," he called to the windrunner stallion who was browsing among the greenery.

Sam looked back down at the task at hand, extricating the dead rabbit from his trap and pulling out his hunting knife. It was grisly work, skinning the skinny animal. It had not yet put on much weight as the spring shoots had only been around for a few weeks. Patiently, he set about his work as he had been taught long ago and recently re-educated by Jaeden. Going slowly helped him make fewer mistakes, insuring a better quality of pelt with which to return to the furriers of Syliras.

What meat he could strip away was also wrapped up carefully to be cooked for supper later, the unusable wreckage of the rabbit carcass thrown into the bushes for scavengers to fight over. It was always good to give back to the system; better than wasting resources. Rather than dirty up a rag with the rabbit blood on his hands, he shuffled over to the tiny creek burbling through the rocks and scrubbed the vitae from his hands in the chilly snow runoff.

He quickly returned to Horse's side, pushing his face away from the figs so he could gather them himself.

"People food. No. People food."

Horse, aware that Sam was playing, pushed back and attempted to eat the fruit, which wasn't even something he enjoyed. Laughing, Sam attempted to gather everything before Horse could, enjoying their impromptu game.

[Rythern]

The nineteen-year-old sat in the tree and glanced at his trousers with interest as a spider-like insect crept up the side of one dangling leg. He was slender and serious-faced, though his resting expression belied a nature that in actuality was far from somber. His horse grazed below a short distance away.

Rythern had been out of the city since dawn, and the wilderness was quiet. It was a change from the shouts and colors of Sylira's stronghold and at the moment, the young Vantha preferred it. He didn't usually. Rythern was a person who instinctively sought other people, and without them for long, the lack of stimulation drove him crazy.

The reason he'd come out to the Bronze Woods was actually one he was in no hurry to explore, and as such he'd shoved it far into an easily-ignored compartment of his brain. Rythern had been thinking of leaving Syliras. He recognized it was a wholly stupid idea after recent events, but he'd begun to wonder about his allegiance here to the Syliran Knights - wonder how much he ought to act on it, which was a bad question to ask with the city gripped in a bizarre plot to topple the current order. He was no stranger to harm, but he was a stranger to actively putting himself in its way for no reason. Truth was, he was starting to think-

No. Rythern dragged his thoughts back to the wilderness. Out here, the trees couldn't care less about the sordid happenings of underground Syliras, and neither could he.

The broomstick in his mind hastily swept those thoughts back to their lonely compartment.

Aeyo quit nibbling on the greenery, evidently finished with lunch, to cast an inquiring glance at him. Rythern unfolded himself quietly from his sitting position and leapt down to rejoin the windrunner mare. The training he'd gotten during his traveling-circus years had led to odd habits now as he was growing into a young man; he was more comfortable in high places than low, for one. He also liked playing with knives, though that was perhaps a different matter.

The Vantha cleared his throat when his feet touched the ground.

"Onward," he said dramatically - Aeyo nudged him - and they trod on along the little-traveled path. One sentence further into the monologue of his life. Impressive.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

Horse snorted a mild warning before Sam had any idea anyone was coming. Glancing at his equine partner-in-crime, he saw his head raised, auriculae turned attentively straight forward, nostrils flaring for more sense information. With practiced quietude, he shoved the figs into one of his saddlebags and leaped quietly and lightning-quick onto Horse's back.

His scimitar was not drawn, but he unbuckled it so that he could draw it with alacrity should circumstances prove perilous.

They said the knights of Syliras kept the city's environs safe, but Sam would disbelieve it until his dying day, probably because when he stopped preparing for the worst, the worst would come and he would die.

Finally his own ears picked up the sound of a single rider, and so he waited for whomever it was to appear from the trees.

[Rythern]

Aeyo found the strangers before Rythern did, if her briefly stiffening posture was any indication. Mildly curious, the Vantha led her slowly forward along the branch-strewn path. The dangers of the forest were something about which Rythern had no misconceptions of naïveté - though the same probably could not be said for his attitude in cities - and even if he was fairly laid-back about the prospect of actually dying (he'd made it this long, hadn't he?), his senses were on the alert.

Then quite suddenly, he parted some foliage from his face and saw a lone figure ahead with a horse.

Aeyo made a nervous-sounding noise... and quickened her pace.

Rythern, who had held his hands out briefly to show he carried no weapon, was startled to find his windrunner suddenly ahead of him. "I- uh." He trailed off. Apparently it hadn't been nervousness.

The traveling performer switched his attention from his horse to the boy. The stranger looked about his age, perhaps. Taller, but with a young face. "Hey," he called out in greeting as he neared. Aeyo, who seemed far more intrigued by the stallion than by whatever conversation Rythern was about to have with another human, left his side and walked over. The corners of his mouth twitched upward.

"That's a nice horse," Rythern remarked, with a nod to the well-bred stallion.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

After the preceding scene, Sam took his hand away from the hilt of his scimitar; he couldn't keep the grin off his face. He could feel Horse straighten and could only hope that this mare was not in heat or else it was likely he'd be thrown and have to sit there and make awkward conversation with this stranger while Horse mounted his horse and made them both feel inadequate.

"Ho, stranger," he called.

Sam slipped off his mount, pulling the reins of the cavesson over Horse's head so he could turn him around by main force if he made a move to rut with the pretty mare.

"Yours is nice too; I just hope she isn't in heat or we're going to be here for a while..."

He chuckled.

[Rythern]

"Ho, stranger," the rider called.

Rythern rolled his eyes at Aeyo, who was now pretending he wasn't there, and flashed a friendly smile to the other human. "Vakya," the young Vantha said by way of introduction. "I'm staying in Syliras for a time."

As they spoke of horses, the stranger added with a chuckle, "Yours is nice too; I just hope she isn't in heat or we're going to be here for a while..."

Rythern cast a dubious glance sideways. He was growing somewhat concerned about the likelihood of this entire exchange taking a strange direction. As an entertainer and once a circus performer, the Vantha found little to be truly embarrassing; however, he suspected that standing in the middle of the woods with a total stranger while their respective horses were like that might even top that unfortunate incident with the kerosene and the exotic dancer on his mental list of Awkward Situations.

Aeyo was a spirited mare, such that she was hardly more so while in heat, so it was difficult for Rythern to discern it from her temperament alone. Evidently the presence of the stallion changed that. He coughed, trying to ignore the urge to laugh. "Right, then," he managed, as his horse tugged impatiently at the line in his hand. He kept a firm grip.

He wondered, though, if her pattern of behavior seemed more typical of her curiosity than her reproductive instincts. "To be honest," Rythern remarked in response to the stranger's comment, "I'm not even really sure. She's hard to tell, and I'm no expert horseman."

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

"I'm Sam," was his reply, "that's Horse, and we're staying in Syliras for a while as well. Just came this season."

He let Horse socialize with the mare, but kept a close eye on them. So far they just seemed friendly, but he was watching for telltale signs, like the mare urinating in front of Horse and displaying her business. If Horse smelled certain things in her urine to indicate sexual preparedness, then nature would take over and they would have to try and step in, though it was anyone's guess if they would be able to do it.

Sam pursed his lips a bit, then chuckled, sharing his expertise.

"Well, if she starts getting kinky and waving her business in his face and peeing in front of him so he can smell her insides, then we might have to worry. So far everything seems... innocent enough..."

[Rythern]

Rythern listened to Sam's concise explanation of the horses' other physiological signs when sexually receptive, and nodded to acknowledge it. Though the Vantha wasn't much of a rider himself, Aeyo had been a longtime companion and would likely be one for many years more. The information Sam imparted would be useful to know later on, as well.

"So far everything seems... innocent enough..." Sam finished, as both watched at the horses.

Rythern agreed - Aeyo and Horse didn't yet seem to be doing anything suspicious, so although he still flicked occasional glances at them out of the corner of his eye, most of his attention went back to the boy in front of him. He'd been looking vaguely familiar to him for a few moments now, and now that Sam mentioned also staying in Syliras for the time, he found himself wondering.

"Do you... work at the stables, or something? I'm pretty sure I've seen you hanging around once or twice," he said. That had mostly been in passing when Rythern still stabled Aeyo, though in light of recent events Aeyo refused now to leave him alone in the city. He had the suspicious feeling the mare didn't trust him to take care of himself - an attitude which, he thought with a wry smile, he probably deserved.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

Startled by the chance recognition, Sam regarded the man for a quick moment before nodding and letting his native smile return to his face. He really wasn't used to people recognizing him; he had spent the last two years wandering and never really putting down roots, but Syliras seemed to want to hold him down, which was fine, he supposed, until his fate caught up with him.

"I don't work there," he said carefully, "but I do visit often to see if anyone is interested in riding lessons. Well, and caring for horses too... Anything, really. Otherwise I'm out and about hunting and gathering and trapping like I was doing today. Living in city walls makes me nervous for some reason, so I like to get out often. Otherwise I might work at the stables for more regular income.

"What about you?" he asked. He couldn't recall meeting Vakya before, though the mare did look familiar. Sam just tended to look at windrunner mares on the off chance that someone offered to pay for Horse's stud services.

[Rythern]

"I've not been in Syliras long, actually. Maybe a couple weeks. I'm a traveling entertainer and I tell stories. I can do a few tricks with knives, too, but that's sort of another story."

Formerly a child of the circus and displaying the natural physical dexterity typical of the Vantha, Rythern once had been a performing acrobat as well, though in the wake of scattered bruises and broken bones, it wasn't an occupation he particularly cared to revisit. Certainly not professionally.

He grinned at Sam. "In other words, I'm unemployed and all but penniless."

Then at Sam's remark, Rythern nodded. "Having walked a few roads myself, I can sympathize with not wanting to spend too much time within the walls." He shrugged. "It doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would anymore, though. People are a good distraction."