Closed How Hard Can It Be? (Azira)

[Zhol]

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There was still a lingering tone of judgement in the huntress's words, but it sounded so natural and at home within her voice that Zhol had to wonder if it was possible for her to sound any other way. It was strangely reassuring, though: Zhol was rapidly getting the impression that she disliked and disapproved of almost everything, and that transformed her judgement into a strange kind of acceptance. Confronted with someone seemingly annoyed by everything, it was far easier to work out where you stood.

As silence fell between them, Zhol felt discomfort wrap around his chest like a vice. He was not overly talkative, and yet anxiety compelled him to fill voids in conversation with sound, to keep the silence at bay. It was the same compulsion that lit the candle in his chambers at night; the same compulsion that hugged his limbs around his bed sheets as if they were a makeshift companion; the same compulsion that turned the stable's horses and mules into some of his only friends. It was not the darkness or the silence that he feared, but rather the loneliness that they brought with them. Zhol would rather have endured a century of scathing words than even another single day of feeling isolated and alone.

As Azira halted her archery, and begun to inspect her arrows, Zhol closed the distance between them still further: not enough to crowd, but close enough that any continued conversation wouldn't have to be conducted loudly enough to carry across the range. His initial intent had been to help, but two steps in he realised that he had no idea what to look for; and the huntress did not strike him as the type who would appreciate incompetent help on the basis of sentiment alone. Instead he merely crouched and observed, and set himself the task of holding the silence at bay.

"I can't speak your language, save for a few scattered phrases," he explained, stating the obvious. "Every time I force one of your people to speak in another tongue for my benefit, I feel like a burden. I work in the stables; every meal I eat knowing that my only contribution to Wind Reach is to care for creatures you scarcely use, adds to that guilt. Every Pinion I get paid, every night I spend in the room Wind Reach provides for me, every single favour and concession made to accommodate me -"

His lips tugged into a small, bittersweet smile. "Of course I'm trying to teach myself. I've already been given far more than I deserve; I have no right to ask for anything else."

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Nari"
This template was made by Khara. She was bribed with coffee and jammy dodgers.

[Azira]

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Her attention was split as the man approached. She was expecting him to say something about what she was doing, question her about what she was checking for. The teen glanced sideways but he was silent beside her, simply watching her go through her checking. The girl tried to ignore him, focusing her attention on the shaft of each arrow instead. She twirled each arrow slowly in her fingers, pressing lightly on the wood to see if any hairline cracks showed up. She checked the way that the arrow heads attached to the tip of the shaft, shaking it slightly to make sure that it was secure. Her fingers ran over the fletching, making sure that that was firmly in place and that no parts of the feathering was missing.

He began to talk as she went about her work. The huntress didn't know what his speech was supposed to relate to, not something that they had talked about before anyway. It didn't seem to relate to anything at all. It seemed to be simple self-pity, the young man pitying himself because he perceived himself as a burden. The teen didn't know why he'd suddenly decided that she was willing to act as a sympathetic listener but she wished that he wouldn't do it. Azira had better things to be doing, like treating straw targets the way that she'd like to treat people. The problem was that he was distracting her from doing what she wanted, splitting the concentration that she needed to check her missiles.

At last, he came to his conclusion and it made the girl groan. He'd gone explaining his self teaching of archery in the most roundabout way and the huntress couldn't help but feel pissed off for him distracting her for no real reason and for longer than necessary. "Is that what this is about? You feel like you're too much of a burden? That you're getting something for nothing? You decided to bother me with this shyke? Can you not see that I'm doing something?" the teen snapped, tossing two arrows into the bin where they put the dud arrows. The good ones were being dropped in a steadily growing pile at her feet as she worked her way through the arrows in her quiver.

"Did you want me to feel sorry for you, is that it? Is Nari a problem? Ask someone to teach you. Val the Gatekeeper would do it and you could pay him in tea leaves. Want to learn how to use a bow? Use some of those pinions to pay for lessons. You wouldn't be the first person to do it. But don't come crying to me, looking for my pity or whatever. Just because I teach a Symenestra some archery now and again doesn't mean that I'll teach you. If that's what you're looking for then petch off." One more arrow was thrown away before she stooped to collect the good ones, returning them to her quiver. She was going to have to buy more arrows soon, perhaps the next market day. Her hunting and archery practice was beginning to take its toll on her supply.

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[Zhol]

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Well then.

Zhol's smile tightened, anything even vaguely positive fading from his face like the sun disappearing from view behind the mountains. His brow twitched into a furrowed frown for a split second, but the expression collapsed quickly as his mind abandoned all efforts to apply logical thought to the other Avora. Whatever connection, whatever rapport Zhol had believed had been established must have been imaginary. Whatever hints of normal human emotion must have been the same. There was something sour about the woman; something bitter and irritable. it reminded him of a huntress Khara had told him about: a walking focus of bile, bitterness, and judgement, wrapped up in skin, red hair, and a bow. Azira had been her name; Zhol had committed it to memory, added it to the list of Inarta who deserved his ire.

He pressed his palms against his knees, and levered himself back to his feet. He was prepared to turn and leave, prepared to simply turn away and leave her to wallow in whatever negativity she sought to drown herself in. There was certainly a reason for it, and under any other circumstances Zhol might have possessed enough sympathy to seek it out and attempt to alleviate it in any way he could; but on this rare occasion, with his patience for this woman exhausted, he was surprised to find that he simply didn't care. Perhaps he knew she was a lost cause, and that pleasantries and civility were a waste of time; perhaps her scathing, disapproving tone merely reminded him a little too much of family. Either way, she could rot in her misery for all he cared.

He turned, making his escape, but before he'd even managed the first pace, something made him pause and caused words to tumble from his lips. "What species were your parents?" His tone wasn't as thorned and scathing as hers: more forthright in its condemnation and disapproval. "Was one of them canine?"

A glare threatened to form on his features, but he held it at bay, shaking his head in disbelief instead. His words slipped beneath his breath into a mutter, shoulders slumped in resignation as he turned away. "That'd explain why you can't help acting like such a miserable bitch."

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Nari"
This template was made by Khara. She was bribed with coffee and jammy dodgers.

[Azira]

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The teen didn't glance in his direction again, too caught up in her own thoughts and emotions to be concerned with how he reacted to her words. All she wanted was to be left alone and she'd be glad, if not happy, when the man left her be. Her shortbow was returned to her right hand, the fingers of her left searching for one of her newly checked arrows, withdrawing it. She focused on her stance, placing her feet carefully in a straight line, perpendicular to the target. The distance between them was carefully judged, the huntress sure that they were shoulders' width apart before pulling herself into an erect but tension-free posture. A brief glance allowed her to place the shaft on the arrow rest, orientating the vanes appropriately.

Taking slow breaths through her nose and out through her mouth, she allowed the rhythmic sound soothe and calm her, bringing her pulse back down to a more normal level. When she felt more at ease, focused only on her shooting, the teen held the arrow in place and raised the bow. The string was pulled back to her chin and she squinted slightly to focus her aim. The time of aiming was brief and it wasn't long before she relaxed her fingers and let the arrow fly, drawing her hand back quickly to try not to interfere with the arrow's flight. Either she did, or her aim was off because it struck halfway between the bull's eye and the edge on the right hand side. She reached for another arrow and had nocked it when the man spoke.

Her body tensed, bow still aimed downwards as her head turned slowly to stare at him. Her mouth was set into a thin line, nostrils flaring. "How dare you insult my parents, you son of a bitch! If anyone has canine in them, it's you you foreign dog!" she snarled, a look of fury warping her features. The bow was still in her hand, the arrow ready so she turned so that the foreigner was in her sights instead of the straw target. She raised it, pulling the string back to her chin and squinted so that she aimed above him and to the right. The projectile was released, purposely sailing past his head although it was closer to him than she had intended.

"Don't give me reason to test my aim." Her words were soft, the girl unsmiling as she regarded him. Sweeping her hair back off her face with a toss of her head she returned her body to its former position, lining herself up in front of the target again.

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[Zhol]

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Zhol didn't flinch, but it was more the paralysis of fear than any amount of bravery or resolve. It wouldn't have done him much good given the speed at which the arrow travelled: had Azira intended to - or had she missed, the way she had been with her target shooting efforts - Zhol would have had an arrow buried in him before he even had the opportunity to move an inch.

"You're crazy."

The words snuck out of him in his native tongue, not as an accusation or insult, but more as a dawning realisation. This wasn't a predictable, rational person: this was a caged animal; a cornered, wounded, unpredictable beast. Every ounce of common sense urged him to flee to safety, but his legs disobeyed, a few slow and cautious paces closing the distance between them once again. The sane part of his mind demanded an explanation, and insisted they stop, but they refused; not until he was close enough to snare her gaze and peer into her eyes.

"What happened to you?"

Again, the harshness that one might have expected was missing from his words. His expression furrowed into a deep frown, his eyes studying Azira as if an explanation for her actions were etched onto her face. There was almost pity in his eyes, and that distracted him from the ominous threat that Azira's bow and her twitchy string fingers posed. She wasn't old - his age or less, at a guess - but there was enough cynicism in her eyes and her scowl for someone several times that. You couldn't earn that kind of perspective by watching the world for such a short time: it had to be beaten into you, on the back of sour experience and bitter memories.

His mind struggled to imagine what cause there could have been. Granted, the famine and the riots had been traumatic for everyone; and for a not unattractive Avora like the one standing before him, there was every chance that she had suffered at the hands of the lower castes in the worst possible way. But if such scars existed, there were certainly others that ran deeper; and if this was the huntress that Khara had spoken about, her anger wasn't aimed at men, or Chiet, or anyone specific; but rather at everyone and everything. Regret over the words he had spoken in anger hung in his chest like a lead weight.

"How does someone so young end up so angry at the world?"

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Nari"
This template was made by Khara. She was bribed with coffee and jammy dodgers.

[Azira]

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A near arrow in the head should be persuasive enough to drive the man away. It was only a matter of time before he went about his own business, running scared from the crazy huntress with the shortbow. Except that he didn't. There was a gasp of some language that she didn't know and then he was in her line of sight. He wasn't in her sights this time, not a target, just standing where he could get her attention. Her body froze as the teen stared back at him. His eyes scanned over her face searching for something. She wondered if the man was trying to understand her aggression and her obvious desire to make him go away.

He'd questioned her, whether it was rhetorical or not, she wasn't sure. Presumably he wanted an answer so not a rhetorical one then. Could she answer? Would she? Was it any of his business what had happened to her in her short life? No, it wasn't and she did't feel like sharing. She very rarely shared any personal information, especially information from the past. Yet she couldn't just ignore his question, a second probe along similar lines searching for information that she still didn't want to give. The teen couldn't remain silent any longer.

"What happened to me? Is that your business? No, but I'll give you a short answer. Life happened to me. The worst parts of it, all right? Leave it at that and leave me alone," the teen told him, her voice sounding more tired now than angry. There had been much that she'd been through, not anything that she was going to share with a total stranger who'd already raised her ire. He had no right to know anything about her, or what she'd been through. It wasn't her fault that she'd been through so much. She hadn't chosen the incidents that had shaped her but they'd done so and she didn't need to explain them to this stable boy.

The death of her mother, the bullying she'd endured as a Yasi, the disastrous relations with men and the near rapes... A hand came up to her hair, a reminder of what she'd been through and her efforts to attempts to appear unremarkable. No, he had absolutely no right to ask her to spill all of that to him. "My business is none of yours," the girl told him, reiterating her former statement. Her eyes fixed on his. "You don't see me asking about your life story? Would you like me to pry?"

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[Zhol]

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Would he?

That question lingered in his mind, more thought given to it than perhaps was expected. The literal question, would he like it, he supposed was answered with a no. But the question meant more than the words. Was his past a secret? Was it hidden? Did he want people to know it all? Was he willing to let them?

The answer his mind provided surprised him. Perhaps by some people's standards, the upheaval he had experienced was small and insignificant, but to him it had taken his world and shattered it into more pieces than he could count. He had lost his home. His family had disowned him. Any future he might have hoped for, any dreams he might have had, all became impossible. His very identity, his very sense of self, had been stripped away and burned to ashes. Whatever he was now, whoever he was now, was built upon that foundation.

And that was exactly why he was prepared for it to be known. He wouldn't broadcast it by choice, of course: but it was part of him; and a very important part. If anyone wanted to know him, if anyone wanted to know who he was, they had to know; it was as simple as that.

"Who I am is because of what happened," he eventually replied; the words felt clunky, but they somehow managed to avoid sounding like an over-contrived proverb. "I may not like it all, and there may be parts that I would prefer to forget; but I'm not ashamed of it. Me without the bad and the pain is as incomplete as me without an arm and a leg."

His attention having faltered slightly as he'd been consumed by his thoughts, he returned his gaze to Azira's eyes. "Would I like you to pry? No. Will I stop you?"

He shrugged.

"Go right ahead."

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Nari"
This template was made by Khara. She was bribed with coffee and jammy dodgers.

[Azira]

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He still didn't go away, the man annoyingly persistent in his continuing existence in her presence. It was maddening. Would he never leave her alone? He reminded her of a limpet that she had once come across while down at Thunder Bay in her youth. It had stuck almost stubbornly to its rock, even when Azira had tried to pull it free. He was reminding her of that limpet right now and she was beginning to feel like the rock. He'd better not continue to stick to her. She didn't understand why he was doing it anyway. He'd been kind enough to point out to her that she wasn't that attractive so she wondered what the fascination with her was.

He seemed to be thinking, considering her words but he made no move to go back to his end of the range. Instead he started to bug her again, attempting to continue a conversation that she didn't want to go on. She agreed with what he said but only up to a point. She was ashamed of her past, she would not share it. There were sections of it that she didn't even like to dwell on herself let alone divulge such information to someone else. He was willing to let her pry into his life, was almost inviting her to but she wanted nothing to do with it. It didn't interest her. She just wanted him gone. She didn't want to know his life story.

"I don't want to pry. I couldn't care less about anything to do with you. I just want to be left alone. Left in peace. Can you manage that one or is it too much trouble?" she shot back, an irritated glare aimed in his direction. She wasn't sure if the message was getting across to him or not but she could only keep trying. She could be persistent as well. If he didn't go away immediately then there would come a point when she'd offend him enough for him to leave her alone, or else grow bored with his failed attempts of talking to her.

"Well? Can you do that much? I mean gods you're an irritating little shyke. Distracting too." Her gaze moved from him again as the Avora tried once more to focus on her shooting. He'd better go away or she was going to run out of insults to fling at him. Threats probably wouldn't work unless she was willing to go through with them and as an Avora he really wasn't worth that trouble.

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[Zhol]

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A sigh escaped him as Zhol held up his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay," he conceded, retreating a step backwards, giving Azira a little of the space she insisted upon. He knew he should just turn and walk away, for his own safety if nothing else; but something wrapped itself around his chest and gently squeezed, not guilt per se, but perhaps a fledgeling form thereof. What others saw as anger, what others steered clear of for their own good, Zhol saw as pain; and with all the will that he could muster, he still couldn't manage to suspend his compassion long enough to simply give up and turn on his heel.

"I get it," he admitted, another small step of compliant retreat. "Something happened to you, the world let it happen, and you're angry at everyone." Another step. The feeling in his chest tightened as to that step he added a leap towards an assumption. "And whatever it is, you can't talk to anyone about it, right? No one could possibly understand. No one could possibly sympathise. After all, they're all Inarta."

His backwards steps brought him as far as his own range; he hesitated, careful to ensure that his voice was loud enough to carry to Azira, but not further. "I'm not though, am I?" He readied his bow and retrieved an arrow, making a show of carefully nocking it onto the string. Task complete, he looked at her once again, cocking his head to the side in half a shrug. "You said it yourself: I'm an outsider. I don't think like you, or them. I don't judge like them."

A few more casual steps moved him into a position to fire, another pause in his ongoing speech as he planted his feet where they needed to be. He drew a breath and readied his bow, but had one last thing to add before he fired. "I had a friend like you, back home. She pushed pretty much everyone away all the time, too."

His eyebrows tugged into a sympathetic frown, a slightly sad smile cast in Azira's direction. "Get's kinda lonely, doesn't it?"

"Pavi" | "Common" | "Nari"
This template was made by Khara. She was bribed with coffee and jammy dodgers.

[Azira]

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At last, she seemed to have gotten through to him. He finally willing to accept that she just wanted him gone. It had taken him long enough. Maybe if he'd grown up amongst the Inarta he would have been made a Dek; he was slow-minded enough. His gradual retreat brought a relaxation to her muscles. She hadn't noticed how much tension his presence had caused, the muscles almost aching now they'd relaxed after having been held rigid for so long. The girl should have known better than to think that he was gone at last. Every other move to go away had been aborted by an attempt to converse with her. This time was no different and as soon as he started again the tension was back. She suddenly stood stiff, frozen as his words began to wash over her.

He did not understand. No matter how much he thought he might he did not understand her at all. She didn't fully understand herself so how could he. She tried to ignore him, block out the words that threatened to make heat bubble up within her, an event that was sure to lead to an expulsion that would be explosive and unpredictable. Despite the tension in her limbs, she attempted to shoot, she really did. The bow was clasped too tight in her hands, wood hard and unyielding to such an assault. The string and arrow dug deeply into the flesh also the feeling unpleasant as they cut into her and sure to break the skin. Teeth ground together as he tried to make himself out to be a sympathetic ear that she could pour her troubles into. Fat chance of that. She persevered in her shooting attempt raising the bow and drawing the string back despite the agony it brought to her tightened muscles. Then things snapped.

His words struck a nerve that seemed to sever violently within her, her body jerking involuntarily as if reacting to a physical bow. The sudden messed up her posture, the string pulled back further in a new burst if strength as the bow itself was almost flung forward from her grasp. She heard the snap and moved her head out of the way just in time to avoid the whiplash of the newly snapped bowstring. Azira wasn't able to react in time to move her arm out of the way, the string smacking with force onto the flesh of her right arm, cutting into the skin enough to draw a thin line of blood. What was left of the shortbow was dropped in reflex as she took a step backwards with a gasp, hand pressed against the stinging, oozing flesh. Blood welled at her mouth as her teeth sank into her bottom lip in reaction to the sudden pain. Tears welled in lachrymal ducts that she pressed her eyelids against them tightly but in vain, the pain-fuelled droplets leaking out before she could trap them. Her shortbow lay useless at her feet, her main means of hunting taken from her because of the abrupt and wrong change in string tension. Rage swelled faster than the tears as she realised that her ruined ability to hunt and the pain she was in had been caused by one person.

Fingers wet with blood reached for what remained of her weapon. Blood had began to trickle down to her elbow but she paid it no mind, body driven with murderous intent. The wood was hefted as a weapon in its own right, a club, as she stormed towards the suddenly unfortunate horse boy. He'd see what was coming for sure but any pleas would go unheeded as the teen began to swing wildly with the intent of smashing his head open. Her body was working on its own, her brain no longer giving orders so she wasn't likely to hit anything unless the outsider was too slow to retreat from her attack.

"Good for nothing piece of shyke! You're dead, understand? Dead!" Her wild shrieks were sure to carry to the other sections of the range but nobody would come running to the rescue, the Chiet and Yasi using the range only willing to approach after the excitement had passed. Zhol would be on his own until Azira either grew too tired to take a swing, or his brains and life blood were oozing onto the ground at her feet. "How dare you even try to understand me! To look at me like I'm a book that you can just read! It's your fault the string's gone! Your fault that I won't be able to hunt properly. Horse petching whoreson!"

OOCAzira may have gotten a little but angry... :|

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