Solo Educating Azira

[Azira]

   

64th Fall 513AV

Getting up, Azira winced as the dull ache in her muscles made itself known. It had been two days since her hiking trip and she was still sore. She has bruises upon bruises, the sore patches still tender and just beginning to darken heading for blue or black. She had scrapes and cuts on her arms, her knees, even some small ones on her face. Luckily for her the mud that had clung to her absolutely everywhere had managed to cushion some of impacts and protected her from far worse scrapes. 

She wasn't considering a hiking trip anytime soon but the idea of going hunting like this made her wince again. She hadn't been hunting at all yesterday. Her body had been so tender the day before that even lying down had hurt as for moving... When it had been necessary for her to move, the huntress had hobbled around looking all the world like a decrepit old woman with her shuffling steps and her moans and groans. She'd gotten quite a few stares in the Inner Warrens and in the kitchens, even a few people had sniggered at her. She'd been so out of sorts that she hadn't even been able to snap at them.

She could go hunting today she supposed. Well she ought to go hunting actually but she didn't exactly feel like wandering the mountainside trying to find game. Perhaps she could find something productive to do in the city though. Maybe she could do some research in the Enclave. A bit of reading was nice and easy to do and then perhaps afterwards she could go out hunting after. The last part made her grimace as she imagined trying to get around feeling the way she did. No, she'd wait and see how things went.

Moving to the end of her bed, the Avora opened the wooden chest that sat there. Reaching in, she retrieved her hunting vinati and bryda, ignoring the dressy outfit that she'd bought at the last market day with Syveris. Gingerly, she slipped her vinati on, her arms aching as she reached back to tie the straps behind her neck. Sitting on her bed, she slipped one foot and then the other into the legs of the bryda and pulled them up. The material was loose and airy meaning that it didn't cling to her legs and aggravate her cuts and bruises. She found herself immensely glad that the Inarta style was so loose. 

Glancing down at her bryda, Azira frowned at the rips and tears in the material and made a note that she'd need to do something about that. Maybe Drusilla would repair it for her. It didn't matter right this second anyway as the young woman slipped on her hunting boots and was about to leave her rooms when she realised that having paper for notes would be a good idea.

Returning to the chest, the huntress dug through her chest down to the bottom where her diary was hidden. Pulling it out, she tore a couple of pages from the back and took the pen too. That done she left her rooms, winding her way through the Inner Warrens towards the Enclave.

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[Azira]

The huntress slipped into the Enclave, the silence enveloping her. It wasn’t a complete silence; there were a few people in there despite the early hour. The rustle of pages, the soft fall of footsteps and the occasional cough (all normal sounds for the setting) all reached Azira’s ears as she crept forward towards the shelves. She headed straight for the non-fiction section, intent on doing some research. Hovering in front of the shelves, she scanned the various titles, checking for books related to hunting.

After the hunting trip that she’d been on with Lavira on the 59th, she’d realised that her knowledge in tracking was considerably lacking. The Endal woman had been able to pick up signs that Azira had no idea about. Sure, they had been hunting big game, something the teen wasn’t used to but that didn’t give her an excuse to be ignorant. The woman might bring her hunting again and she didn’t want to appear like a chick again beside the teen. So that’s why doing some research was important and so why not do it today when she couldn’t do anything else?

Finding a likely book, the girl drew it from the shelf and flicked through it. It had various tracking signs listed in it so that seemed like just the one she wanted. As she was about to move to a table she spotted another book on animals and their habits. She took that one down as well and carried it to one of the reading tables. Azira sat down, made herself comfortable, placing paper and pen on the table, and flicked through the animal book until she reached the first animal that seemed like it could be a good target in the future: a boar.

Drawing the paper and the pen towards her, she wrote “Boar” in clear, bold letters and underlined it. She skimmed the passages in the book on the creature, which were written in Common. She took careful notes about its eating habits and its behaviour. The Avora noted that it was an omnivore, paying particular attention to the fact it ate roots. If something ate at roots then that would be a noticeable sign, right? She also wrote down that its mating season was in the middle of Fall, drawing an arrow from it to write a note on the aggressiveness of males at that time. As a final memo, she jotted down that the creatures were found lower down on the mountain meaning that she’d probably find it in the valleys.

Pausing, she examined her skimpy looking notes critically, wondering what else she could write on wild boar. She had probably written down the most important points so maybe it was better just to write the most vital points down rather than filling the page with rubbish. Either way it was going to be a long day seeing as she had not even written down any tracking methods yet.

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[Azira]

   

The huntress got some more ink and flicked through different pages in the animal book. A deer seemed like a good candidate and so she found that section and wrote a new title "Deer", underlining it. She began to take notes on it, asterisking one important note on how much the animal needed to eat each day. So if they ate a lot of food every day then there would be obvious signs. She opened the tracking book, turning the pages until she found a bit on eating related signs. It read:

"In an area where animals feed, there will be noticeable signs that they have done so. Large animals like deer require a lot of nutrition each day. As a result they will often strip plants of their foliage. One can spot this quite easily as sections of branches will be bare or at least greatly depleted. Another sure sign is scat as animals will usually leave such tracks near to where they eat."

The Avora looked thoughtful for a moment but then began to write down the relevant points. Most of it seemed pretty basic and so she wondered how she'd never noticed such things before. Well she supposed that it would have to do with the fact that rabbits and squirrels were common and easy to bring down and so those were the signs that Si'ira had taught her. It made sense that her mentor had shown her the tracking signs that she'd need as opposed to the ones related to bigger game.

The teen flicked idly through the animal book's pages, trying to find anything of interest. It seemed to have most of the animals of Northern Kalea in it and so it was useful to her unlike many of the hunting books that had found their way into the Enclave. There were a number of animals in this book that Azira had never come across before in reality though she had heard of them. One, a takin, caught her attention and she skimmed it with some level of interest. Apparently they had a strong liking for "salt licks" and so could be easily lured and cornered by using them as bait. It might be useful in the future so she wrote it down for the sake of it.

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[Azira]

   

Research was surprisingly tiring. It took at least a bell of reading just to make a page of notes and usually it was more than that to work out the best bits to write down. It was all well and good if she just borrowed these sorts of books for a bit of light reading but she didn't normally need to read over passages several times just to decide what bits were noteworthy.

After about two bells, the huntress put her head in her hands and laid her head down the table. She shouldn't be this tired just from a bit of reading and writing but she was simply exhausted. It was probably because her body was still tired after her little hiking trip. She wouldn't be surprised if she was getting sick or something after getting so wet. She'd been chilled to the bone afterwards. The teen had still been a little cold even after soaking in a hot bath. So if she came down with something she wouldn't be at all surprised.

As the girl sat there with her head on the table, she became aware of a slight vibration or shaking. It seemed to be coming through the table but she could also feel it in her feet and through the chair. Sitting up, she gazed down at her feet trying to see the cause but then understanding dawned. It was a tremor. The mountain was trembling. It was beginning to become more noticeable or maybe she was just more aware of it now but she was certain that she could actually see the ground vibrating beneath her.

The other people in the Enclave had begun to notice as well as the tremor began to grow in intensity. There were actually voices being raised as the books started to shudder on the shelves. As she watched, one was shaken off the shelf. The teen got to her feet, wobbling a bit with the vibrations under her and moved as quickly as she could over to the nearest shelf as more books fell off.

Azira tried to keep as many on the shelves as possible, not wanting any of the precious volumes to be damaged by a fall but it was hard work. They wouldn't stay on the shelves. No matter how many of them she pushed back into their places, more just vibrated out again. It was frustrating, very much do in fact but the girl only gave up when it became a full ground quake and a strong one at that. 

She lost her footing, landing on some of the books that had  fallen down before she'd gotten over to them. The Avora couldn't get to her feet and now the books were shaking down on her at an alarming rate. The girl had to crawl backwards as the tomes bounced off her all ready sensitive body. She was quick about crawling away so there wasn't too much damage done to her.

The huntress crawled back to the table and the mountain gave one last shudder before becoming still. 

Hauling herself up, using the table as a lever, the girl found the table an absolute mess. Her inkwell which she had neglected to close had spilt all over her notes and had covered a good section of her work space. One corner if the one of the books had gone dark with the ink that had soaked into it. The only good thing was that there was still some ink in the bottle and she could salvage some of the spilt liquid if she pushed it across the table and into the bottle using her now sodden note paper. The girl managed to get the bottle up to about half full but it didn't make her feel any better.

The notes that she had been working on we're completely and utterly destroyed. She had lost some of her ink and she had partially damaged one of the books. Just great. Bells of work down the drain and a mess to boot. The huntress couldn't even do anything productive like hunting now because the groundquake was sure to have sent the animals into hiding. 

Feeling frustrated, the huntress gathered up her pen and inkwell, leaving the mess for some Dek to clean up, and strode from the Enclave.

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[Azira]

   

What she was to do with the rest of her day was a mystery. She didn't even know why she'd let the Enclave. The groundquake had shaken her just as surely as it had shaken the mountain. The girl had no idea what to make of what she'd just witnessed and felt yet it had made her somewhat anxious, hyper even. The teen just couldn't bring herself to stay still.

The huntress carried her belongings back to her rooms, shocked by the debris that filled the Inner Warrens. Pieces of the tunnel had fallen off and littered the ground. Some had crumbled almost into a powder from the force of the vibrations and there was something unnerving about that. It reminded her of the time after Ivak's imprisonment ended. The city had been terribly damaged in the Djed storm, sections of the tunnels had collapsed completely and bodies were found crushed beneath the rubble. The teen found herself eyeing the piles uneasily as if she expected to find somebody dead there. Nothing would have  surprised her after that quake.

When she reached her room, the Avora discovered that a thin layer of stone dust covered her bed and that a section of rock had fallen from the ceiling. It had landed just short of her water basin, which was a good thing. Not only would the fall have shattered the basin but it would have lost her her clean water supply as well.

Storing her belongings in the chest at the bottom of her bed, Azira tried to decide what to do. She settled for cleaning off the dust for the moment but that didn't take long and so she had to find something to preoccupy herself with.

Having nothing else to do in her room and having no idea where she was going, Azira went back out into the Inner Warrens. Perhaps she'd wander around and assess the damage.

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