PM to join [Khida] Behind the Strangeness of Your Eyes

[Aramenta]

Ara was no farrier, though she deeply respected those who were. But this was not farrier's work - this was the everyday. The device the woman held up now was one Ara - or Livvy - had held and used pretty much every day of their life.

"Hoof Pick. Hoof?"

The word popped out so automatically, she entirely forgot, for a moment, that she could not be heard when speaking. She blushed, and nodded, and instead took the bird-woman's empty hand in her own small hands, and ran her fingers over the surface, molding her, folding her hand at the knuckles, and pressing the digits together into a curve, something like a horse's hoof. Then she set it on the table, gently, something like a horse might lay his foot.

She frowned, unsure how to describe this part, then laughed. It was a queery sight, the perfect image of a laugh, the bouncing of the breast and lip, the subtle sussurations of air rolling the muscles of the throat, the eyes shutting, then reopening, but with no sound, but for the very, very faintest of dry hisses, lost likely in the marketplace bustle. Then she leaned forward, her hand closing over the woman's 'hoof', teasing it open, to squeeze it. Her lips went just by the woman's ear again, and she said.

"My papa, he is a breeder. I can show you? You will come with me? I can show you how they work..." she takes a breath, the warmth of it weirdly intimate, almost as loud so close to the ear as her voice. She tries to simplify her speech, "I have a horse. I take care of my horse. You come with me, I show you?"

Then she stood up, and looked at the woman's eyes with a quiet corner of a smile, releasing the hand.

Livvy didn't like a bit of this, of course. Her mistress was fussing about far too close to this dangerous woman. The snubbing of her own attempts at being helpful (well. Sort of helpful) meant little enough to her - she was a slave, she was used to being sneered at. But Ara, she worried about. She saw the signs for 'come with me', 'companion', 'show', and squirmed, uncomfortable. But she was obedient first and foremost, and so as she stepped close beside her mistress, she may have looekd a touch protective, but she removed heer antagonism from her face, and shut up, simply staring blankly at the scene. It was a trick she'd learned, one she hated, but realized the value of - the trick of ceasing to be human, and becoming simply The Slave, soulless, mindless, empty.

Ara nodded gently to the bird-woman. There was a comfort, a passive, expected comfort in finding Livvy at her back. An abolitionist might wish to write the scene with Ara aware of what her companion's movement meant. But in truth, there is, in being raised a particular way, too powerful a magic, sometimes. She simply knew Livvy was there, the way one might feel comfort in a very well-beloved dog pushing her nose into one's palm. She pulled gently at the naked woman's hand, gesturing 'come, come, come'.

[Khida]

The quiet one spoke, and Khida didn't catch the word. She laughed, soundless, then took hold of Khida's hand. The Kelvic pulled back a little, but suffered Ara to lean in and whisper at her -- as that seemed to be the only way they could really communicate. And the girl offered to show her these things, these tools, the horses... something which surprised Khida, given the initial moments of their meeting. Given the way Livvy continued to regard her. Khida didn't disregard Livvy, unaware -- and uncaring -- of her slave status. So while she nodded to Ara, her hand echoing the sign come with a confidence that suggested it at least was familiar to her, she moved to put the Drykas girl between her and the other. And more than that -- while Ara might regard her companion as a constant, comforting presence, familiar unto complacence, Khida kept Livvy in the corner of her view at all times, actively watching, actively wary. As they began to walk, Khida firmly dislodged Ara's hand from hers, though she didn't seem against walking beside her. Neither did she seem motivated to start a conversation along the way between origin and destination, remaining quietly intent.

[Aramenta]

Ara's smile as the woman agreed to follow, transformed - it bloomed. Perhaps in a finer romantic's tale, it would be said that this was the blossoming or some noble purpose behind taking the girl. In truth, it was a mixture of simply the pleasure of discovering how to give someone else what they would like with little cost to one's self, and the child's pleasure of wanting something, and then being told one may have it. Her pleasure was such that her regard of other things dissolved - the original draw of the tugging discomfort of the gawking crowd was left to unwind itself, the consideration of the mess the bird-woman had made of the market stall was left as irrelevant, even her work to help cover the woman's nudity was unconsciously dismissed - only the call of a little adventure stood before her now, tugging at her. A mystery.

She therefore began to tug the woman toward the same narrow passage as before. The woman drew her hand away, and Ara frowned - she liked the vague conception she had of making this lost lady into a sort of sister in her mind, it had a pleasant story-ness to it - but shrugged it off. The woman kept following after all, and Ara had accepted already that she was simply the guide of the situation, not the leader. She was used to submitting to the will of someone else. It felt comfortable and familiar and safe.

Ara was too small and too much the local to take the main thoroughfares - if nothing else, she wanted this to be her own adventure, and aside from Livvy, who herself seemed none to interested in getting close to the other woman, she didn't wish to acquire a train of followers. The space, though, was narrow, and generously peppered with stakes and guide ropes, and crates and ash-heaps. Ara and Livvy both picked through these with the semi-grace of familiarity and long practice, but it was a clumsy path.

Livvy, nervous, began to hum softly, as they walked, then softly to sing along with their steps with the vague diffidence of the habitual singer.

"Ima gone walk on, I'm a gone walk on
Gone walk 'till the day of workin' i' done
Gone walk 'till their ain't no more to be gi'en,
'Till I done earned another sweet day o' my livin'.

Then I gone lay down, an' gonna dream I'm free,
Gone dream I'm a-ridin' on the great grass sea,
Gone dream, gonna dream, though I don' know what for,
'Cause then I gone wake up, and gone walk some more."

Ara absently bobbed her head to the quick-stepped tumbling beat of the song. She liked to hear Livvy sing, it made the whole adventure more her own. She turned, abruptly, threaded through a tent where some old men tore at long strips of jerky with their fingers, laying them in boxes of sand to dry enoguh to preserve for wintertime. The old men glanced up, then stopped, watching the strange entourage thread through their pavilion, frowning to themselves.

"Gone walk, 'till their ain't no more walkin' to do,
Gone walk, 'till the days o' my walkin' are through,
Gone walk, gone walk, 'till the day I die,
And Mama Dira gone come, gone come down beside,
On a pale white horse, near 20 hands high,
And from that day, I ain't gone do nothin' but ride."
x

[Khida]

Khida followed the quiet girl through the city, quiet herself as she watched Ara navigate around tent pegs and trailing lines and piles of discarded ash, then did the same herself, nearly following in the other girl's footsteps. She thought nothing of the route she was guided along, twisted and cramped though it was; presumably, it connected where they were and where they were going, and that was good enough. It's not like it was closed to the sky, after all. What the Kelvic found strange was simply the act of walking so far -- it had been seasons. No, she realized, upon further reflection -- a full year at the least. A year now since she'd left the desert for the grasslands. If she were human, Khida might have found that cause for celebration, or observance, or something eventful. The Kelvic simply noted it and moved on. Then the axe-girl began to sing, a song about... walking, of all the strange things to celebrate. Or... did it celebrate? As Khida directed her attention upon the second girl, she revised that assumption; while she was most familiar with songs raised at festivals and the like, this oddly melancholy tune definitely didn't fit in that category at all. And as she reflected on the words Livvy sang, she came to the conclusion it didn't make sense -- not for this place, where horses outnumbered humans. "You have horses," she stated, unmindful of the way her flat speech clashed with the melodic rhythm of song. "If you want to ride, why don't you?"

[Aramenta]

Livvy stopped singing as the bird-woman spoke, her face frowning, but perhaps a touch less suspiciously, a little more quietly and internally. Ara turned back as well, but did not stop, threading through the pavilion absently, familiarly.

Livvy was the one that spoke, though finally, her hands turned down to go back and forth between the bellies of her two companions.

"Can't ride. None of horses is mine," Livvy tangled off her tongue in poor common-speech. Ara heard this and signed back to her with her hands, and Livvy snorted, half-smiled, "Ride a mule sometimes. She does not like riding much, though. But I don't own her neither. Ain't never gone own a horse, more 'n likely. Ain't never gone own nothin'."

Ara stopped, now, just as they went out the other end of the tent, and frowned, to speak, looking between the two women awkwardly, trying to figure how to speak to both. Livvy caught the hint, and though she did so uncomfortably, she frowned, started to move a bit closer to the bird woman. ARe frowned, and made a sign with hand: "Axe". Livvy frowned harder now, and looked at Ara for confirmation. Ara nodded again, decidedly, and Livvy frowned, taking the axe from the halter to lie on the ground before moving closer, less aggressive now than, perhaps, a little frightened.

Ara, then, to steady herself as she leaned forward, put a hand on each of their shoulders, then whispered between their ears, in clumsy common

"Other people, own horses. Drykas, own pack horses, mules. Little horses. No owning STrider. No owning a brother? No owning a wife? A strider, erm.... same. A Strider..." she struggles, looking for the words, fails, "Is samer. Canterfoot not owned."

She leaned back again, clearing her throat, at the strain of speaking loud enough for both to hear. Livvy backed away, slipped her axe back in its holster, and nodded, "That's her Strider. Canterfoot. Striders, they only take people they want. Then, a Strider takes you, you're a Drykas, don't matter where you come from."

Livvy frowned, grew quieter. Ara frowned at her, then turned, leading them onward. There, near the edge of the city, is the Stonewhistling Pavilion. As Ara and Livvy come in sight of it, a narrow, sleek-boned Strider, light and quick in her slender haunches, lifts her head and whinnies softly from where she stands before the tent: Canterfoot. Ara looks at the horse with the pride one has over having a very admirable friend, and points to her bonded strider with a smile, leaning forward.

"Come, lady. I will show you. Go slow, she doesn't know you."x

[Khida]

Khida paused as the axe-girl did, glancing over towards the quiet one when she continued on. From the way Ara looked back at them, it was clear she wouldn't leave them behind, so Khida returned her full attention to Livvy. To the girl's statements, her despair of ever owning possessions, the Kelvic could only tilt her head, blink in bemusement, and then shake her head. She didn't understand Livvy's preoccupation with ownership. With things. Khida herself owned nothing, and had little reason yet to really mind the lack. Livvy moved, and the axe came out again; though neither act conveyed patent threat, Khida's attention sharpened on her nonetheless. When the girl set it aside, she let her approach, and Ara as well. She had a pretty good idea what was coming -- borne out as Ara came up to whisper into their ears. When the soft-voiced girl had finished, Khida glanced over at the two of them and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. But she didn't respond immediately, as she looked for the words to describe her as-of-yet vague sentiments. "Things are owned," the Kelvic finally began, slowly. "Things do not have mind, personality, will. Living... the living choose to stay, or to go." She shrugged again, after that, ultimately unconcerned whether or not the Drykas girls agreed with her. They went on, to a pavilion situated at the edge of the city. As they neared it, Khida glanced towards the sun, considering where they'd walked and where she'd started from even before taking human shape. His camp, she thought, sat about a quarter of the way around the city from here. She'd go back there, after they finished here. The quiet girl made a statement of the obvious, and Khida glanced at her briefly with mild exasperation. Of course the Strider didn't know her -- that went without saying, or should have. The Kelvic stepped forward without hesitation, but kept her pace slow, in the meantime reviewing signs she had seen the hunter use. As she neared Canterfoot, she gestured an approximation of greeting, following it after with permission... though she didn't know if the Strider actually understood either of them. Stopping a bit outside of arm's reach from the horse, she held out a flattened hand for the Strider to sniff in more conventional introduction -- if it saw fit to do so.

[Aramenta]

Ara, for her part, did not really even consider whether she agreed or disagreed. Philosophy is the pursuit of the mysterious, and Ara was, perhaps, still too young to know that great mysteries are found in what we know best. Livvy, perhaps, pressed her lips together with a little of the hardness of one practiced in the arts of necessary silence, but the hardness was not turned, now toward the bird-woman, who clearly was something strange and stunted, in Ara's mind, and certainly not turned toward Ara. Ara was simply the world. The order of the world was not her affair. To curse the names and shapes of things is not to curse the world they live in.

Canterfoot, if horse's were human, would have been a slender, aquiline countess. Her fur was sleek and curry-smooth, and her eyes were broad, the bones of her face narrow, and spare of flesh. Approached by a stranger, the horse looked to the two girls that she knew. Ara nodded, and half-bowed, making the friend sign across her breast. The horse looked, then, at the nude woman, still and quiet for a moment, then leaned forward a slow, graceful head, to snuffle quietly at the woman's palm. The horse snorted, not fear, but surprise, perhaps. Sniffed again, sniffed, if the woman let her, up the length of her bare arm, then at her face, walking slowly forward to reach. She did not whinny, her body staying placid and smooth, her finely muscled flanks quivering once as she sniffed at the woman's hair, then stilling again.

She stepped back once, looked to Ara, with a soft murmur of sussurrating, suspicious horse breath. Ara made the sign again: "Friend." But then, Canterfoot loved Ara sufficiently to do that greatest of services one does for a friend - she acknowledged the girl's weaknesses. Thus it was, that the horse took a cross-glance at Livvy. Ara saw the glance, with a slight frown, just the quietest corner of one. Her strider did not trust her judgement of people. She could not bear to be offended by this, so instead she settled for behind humbled, turning to look to Livvy. The horse, after all, did not care about hierarchies. She cared for her own safety, that of her Drykas, and whatever duties the two of them accepted together. Livvy blushed, and Ara wondered why. Perhaps she'd noticed. With the clumsy, accented hands of an outsider, she two swept 'Friend', and then 'Safe' across her breast.

The horse looked between the two girls, a moment, then stepped back toward the nude woman. Ara leaned to Livvy, whispered in her ear, and the slave trotted off quick towards the house.

Ara then approached Canter, patting her neck gently. With humans' there was a sort of reserve, what an outsider might have called, in a generous moment of romanticism, an air of hermited mystery. With the horse, this queerness and reserve melted. Between the two, the barriers were much more frail and slender. Ara melted slightly, and grew suddenly much younger, and much more open. Her smile broadened almost saucily, her gestures lost their subtleties and grew more expansive, her eyes sparkled confidently. The horse lowered her head with the familiarity of one who knew her partner well by now, and Ara leaned up to whisper in the horse's ear. The horse snorted out a light, low whinny, a sound almost like a cross between a laugh and a clucking of the tongue. Ara smiled, and turned to the bird woman. Her hand, if she let Ara, would be guided gently to the horse's neck, Ara's lips coming near her ears. x

[Khida]

Livvy's tension passed entirely unnoticed by the Kelvic falcon, for her attention was still turned upon the horse, waiting for its response to her action. To fly, if it acted in a threatening manner -- though she didn't expect the creature to do so. Horses, after all, seemed to be more mild-mannered than that as a rule. This one seemed no different, as it looked to the girl who was its rider, then leaned forward to whuff at her outstretched hand. The horse, for all its looming size, did not menace in its proximity as a person with a weapon might, or as a beast with sharper teeth and the will to use them would; Khida remained stock-still as its hot breath and soft nose crept their way up her arm, to her shoulder, then into her hair and face. Not the stillness of fear, but the stillness of patience -- and forbearance, though exactly what measure of that she possessed remained to be seen. Thankfully, the horse stepped back before Khida had to decide just how much examination she was going to put up with. It regarded the two girls once again, and this time she turned to look at them as well, catching the axe-girl's reluctant signs. The second, she didn't recognize, but the first, the dark-haired woman met with a bewildered blink. Friend? she echoed, surprise in her posture and in the way her hand hovered in the air after the sign was shaped, for the literal meaning of the gesture was one she didn't actually know -- and the connotations she associated with it were not the same as went with two chance-met girls. Especially not the one who had started out nearly threatening her, and seemed to remain unkindly disposed afterwards. Would this ever get less confusing? She opened her mouth to ask the questions which rose to mind -- but then the moment was broken, the axe-girl dashing off to the pavilion, the horse returning its attention to the Kelvic, and the quiet girl stepping forward. Tilting her head, Khida watched as the girl greeted the Strider; if she noticed the change in Ara's demeanor in that process, she seemed to give it no thought or question. "I do not understand," the Kelvic remarked. "Not the horse," she added, almost dismissively cutting off that possible interpretation. "The other one." She tensed slightly as the girl reached for her hand, but did not resist as she guided it towards the horse, watching from the edge of her vision as the girl leaned in towards her ear.

[Aramenta]

Ara smiled, stopped a moment backing up, as the woman spoke, but nodded, softly. Then leaned back in. Ara was terrible oriented around the sense of touch, and as she relaxed, she grew less restrained in it. She released the woman's hand , but set her other hand her shoulder as she whispered.

"Early. Not ridden yet. Canterfoot like her neck rubbed. Hmm?" Then a pause, the musing hand on the woman's shoulder tapping, in the barely restrained loquacity of one who spoke more clearly with her hands than her voice. She spoke again, making the friend sign, with a strong strain of love, in the rolling of her free hand's fingertips, and her face is warm.

"You have friend? You not friends, noone?" the common tongue was clumsy and ugly on her tongue, and her hand, without thinking ran expressively in Pavi across the front of her as she spoke. "Livvy careful, always careful. Always wants safe friends for me. Always want me safe, hmm? You act strange - not you-strange, but us-strange? Sense in that? So, Livvy nervous, not know. Not trustery, Livvy, because she love me. It is hard, different from where you come from? We can teach you to not be us-strange, maybe?"

Canterfoot flickered, but relaxed, Ara coming scratching behind the horse's ears. Ara leaned one more time in close, "Livvy gets the hooks to clean her hooves. You will help, hmm? I will show you?"x

[Khida]

Following the quiet girl's cue, Khida rubbed at the horse's neck, mostly with the direction of its coat. After a moment, she curled her fingers slightly for more of a scratching, though without much pressure. When Ara tapped on her shoulder, Khida paused and glanced towards her, initially thinking it a request for her fully attention. But not really, as it proved, just more of an idle mannerism. "This is 'friend'?" she echoed, removing her hand from the horse to reiterate the gesture: friend. That meaning did fit the context she knew for the sign, and Khida nodded slightly to herself with the confirmation of its significance. "I have," she said, but distractedly, as her thoughts were caught by the rest of Aramenta's speech. Did she act strangely? The Kelvic considered this for a short while, then ultimately dismissed it. She didn't act strangely, she acted as herself. And whatever 'you-strange' and 'us-strange' was supposed to distinguish, Khida didn't get it. That noncomprehension showed rather clearly in her expression, but from her lack of interruption, she also seemed content to let Ara ramble on as she pleased. But the offer of teaching, that brought her focus back to the Drykas girl. "Can you teach me Pavi?" she asked, figuratively pouncing on the offer as her younger self might have a mouse. "And this, the... the hands," she continued, signing friend once more as illustration. She didn't actually know what to call that mode of communication. Clean the horse's hooves. Khida looked towards the digits in question, what from above looked like a quite solid piece of horn or nail. She had never examined them closely before. "They are not clean? What is it that needs cleaning?"