On Top of the World (Zhol)

by **Khara** on November 25th, 2014, 2:05 am

Khara wasn’t quite sure what to make of the fact that Zhol seemed as flustered as she was. She’d seen him embarrassed and a bit nervous around her before, but for the life of her she couldn’t figure out why he would be right now. That was, until he mentioned the string. He hadn’t meant to let the arrow go so soon, then. At least she knew something to look for, at least. Maybe he wasn’t quite holding it correctly…

Still, Khara had to try and not let the small laugh that weaseled its way up through her throat escape. It wasn’t that he said anything particularly funny, but she couldn’t help but be amused by his demeanor. It was a definite improvement over the sadness he seemed to cling to earlier and the way he stumbled over his words was actually somewhat - Don’t you even think it. - cute. Petch. The laugh was contained but the fidgety smile that formed instead wasn’t nearly as easy to conceal.

"You did do better. I do not know how much fixing I will do now, but we shall see about the problem string, ok? Maybe watch how I hold it? I’m sorry, I was not looking so much how you did." Despite lingering feelings of awkwardness that refused to fully drop, Khara managed to sound a bit more confident. Even if she wasn’t exactly looking forward to shooting another arrow. What if it did better again? Gods, what if she actually hit the center?? Oh please, she tried to convince herself though it somehow sounded even more anxious than her actual voice. You’ve never done that. It isn’t going to happen now, that’s for sure.

The worry was pushed down, or at least as best as it could be, as Khara refocused on just simply trying to make each movement as clear and precise as possible. Arrow nocked, bow arm raised and slightly bent, fingers reset around the string and arrow... She paused there and tried to look at how she almost instinctively always placed her fingers. It didn't look like anything special to her, just her three middle fingers, leaving the thumb and pinky out of the equation. One finger above the arrow, two below; nothing really amazing there that let her hold anything better, it was just how she was taught. As Khara drew back though she tried to really figure it out, watching where the string rested, just past the first knuckle of each finger. It seemed a natural place for it, secure but not so far in that when she relaxed her hand that anything would get in the way...

The realization dawned on her. There was a reason she held it that way. What had her mother told her about not using her fingertips? She couldn't remember but maybe it would be worth mentioning.

"When you pull back, try to get a good grip on the string. I don't put it before the first bend," Khara paused at the questioning of the word once more. "If you use your fingertips, it's more likely to slip out and your hand is fighting against the string rather than just holding it. That mean word comes up again here; you need to let your hand relax."

She couldn't think of anything more to say on the subject, only hoped that Zhol could at least see what she meant so that it could fill in any gaps. There was no way of telling if that was the problem he had been experiencing until she watched him later.

The rest of the shot was continued as slow as the set up. One more she drew back to the same spot at her cheek and let the weight of the draw shift to her back as she took aim. A long breath was let go as Khara released the shot and watched with a mixed feeling of glee and dread as it impacted just inside of where her last arrow had struck.

"Okay so, really good luck today," she guiltily commented and cast a mischievous smile towards Zhol. "I'm blaming you. Remind me to make you come with the range more often, okay?"

"Nari" | "Common" | "Pavi"

by **Zhol** on November 25th, 2014, 3:47 am

|.

While Khara hadn't necessarily intended it as such, that invitation to use archery as an excuse to spend more time with her caught him so completely by surprised that his heart was too busy dancing around in excitement to remember what it was supposed to be doing, and skipped several beats. Better yet was Khara's reaction to it all: nothing so arrogant as pride, but she was certainly pleased with what she'd done; satisfied; confident; more sure of herself, and more comfortable in her capabilities than Zhol had ever seen her. What had before seemed like the worst kind of terrible idea had come full circle: any amount of discomfort, embarrassment, and shame on his part was a laughably cheap price to pay to see Khara smile like that.

"Oh really?" Zhol challenged, making sure the light-hearted nature of his teasing was abundantly evident, even across their language barrier. "I don't think it's luck at all: I think you've been misleading me about your archery skills this whole time." Zhol ignored the added commentary that his mind provided; that given everything that had happened to him, there was no way that he could bring good fortune to anyone; that luck was not something that enjoyed his company. His gut twisted at the notion, but he hid it and buried it. Not now. Sadness could come later. Here, now, all that mattered was this chance to enjoy spending time with Khara without anything else getting in the way.

A flicker of a mischievous smile of his own tugged at the corner of Zhol's mouth. "Bet you can't do it again."

by **Khara** on November 25th, 2014, 6:08 am

"What?" Khara chirped out, shocked in the sudden switch in Zhol's behavior. It seemed only fair, though. She had teased him a bit first but that result was entirely unexpected. Another slightly flustered attempt at shooting, maybe a bit of tweaking his form by nudging his arms into the right places, maybe some over flattering words that would leave them both embarrassed at the end. But him challenging her?

Cheeks flushed as her eyes widened a bit as she looked at him. The shock quickly wore away to a smile as she glanced out of the corner of her eye at the target. She was shooting a lot better - way more consistent at least - than usual as the cluster of three arrows was proving. Maybe it had something to do with the over awareness of everything she was doing as she was trying to show him what to do. Maybe it provided her with the focus and self-awareness she actually needed. Suddenly her little joke about having him come with her to the ranges all the time didn't seem quite so silly anymore.

Her lips tugged to the side in a thoughtful smirk as she looked back at him. "Fine."

She wasn't overly competitive, it just wasn't in her nature mostly - every Inarta seemed to have it at least a little bit, after all - but something about that look her gave her made her want to play along. One last glance was cast his way, her own playful smile returning before she drew one last arrow from her quiver.

Despite the thrill of the challenge, Khara tried to focus on what had made her do well so far. Going slowly, taking her time, each move done with as much care as she could manage, though she injected a bit more of her own natural rhythm into everything. The hesitation between raising the bow and drawing back the string left as she did both in one fluid movement, balancing bow and drawing arms until she felt the tension of the shot once more more to her back. She aimed as best she could, trying to replicate exactly as she had been doing, each breath taken deeply as she tried to focus every bit of her attention down past the arrow toward the target.

One final breath was drawn into her lungs as Khara felt more sure than ever of how everything simply felt right, how the target seemed more clear than normal, how the rest of the world seemed to fade into the background in preparation for her to let the breath out and then-

"Nari" | "Common" | "Pavi"

by **Zhol** on November 25th, 2014, 6:33 am

|.

"You look really pretty when you shoot."

The words tumbled out of his mouth before he even realised what he was about to say. It was his own fault: a distraction had been his plan, something to provoke Khara into an adorable display of faked frustration, something to execute and bury all of the awkwardness and discomfort from earlier; but he'd left the distraction to instinct, and had blurted out something that he should never, ever have said.

His insides burned with horror, and it took all of the effort he could muster to keep that from spreading to his face. Those words were out there now, that fact existed in the world; that was the reality he had to deal with, and how he dealt with it would make all the difference. If he panicked, if he looked horrified, that could go horribly wrong. People complimented each other on their appearance all the time, and it didn't have to mean anything; but panic might prove that it did, or worse convince Khara that not only was it something he hadn't wanted to say, but that it was something he hadn't meant either, and for all his desire not to admit to her that there were thoughts of anything but friendship lingering in his mind, he couldn't bear the thought of her not knowing that what he'd said was true.

At least his words had resulted in the desired effect: distracted by his words, Khara's aim had faltered, and the arrow careered wildly off course. Zhol fought to keep the mischief in his eyes, choosing his next words carefully.

"Guess I'm not so lucky after all, huh?"

by **Khara** on November 26th, 2014, 4:03 am

"You did that on purpose!" Khara shouted, though her tone was anything but angry. There was no shortage on shock and even a bit of dismay as she had watched her arrow entirely miss the target and plunge into Shivias's depths before rising to the surface just in time to slip over the waterfall's edge. Those feelings, however, were balanced out if not entirely overwritten by the sheer inability to accept the compliment and the blush that had turned her almost as red as the scarf he had given her.

Her lower lip was tugged at by her front teeth, but still a smile persisted as she stared him down after her accusation. She didn't know if she should be flattered or annoyed or flustered or amused and so found herself drifting between the motions until she let a laugh leave her. "I would have done that! And you had to..." Khara paused and shook her head, completely failing at any attempt to be cross with the boy, even if only in a joking manner.

"That wasn't so nice." With the last word emphasized she reached out and gave him a playful shove.

"Nari" | "Common" | "Pavi"

by **Zhol** on November 26th, 2014, 4:23 am

|.

It might only have been a playful shove, but it was a sudden and unexpected one, and with Zhol's mind distracted and agitated by his unintentional admission, apparently his body was as off balance as his head was. He recoiled from the shove out of reflex, but only with his upper body, his feet too firmly rooted to the floor with panic.

He felt his balance falter instantly, and found himself flailing, grabbing for anything to try and find stability. He tried to lift a foot and shift it backwards to catch himself, but it found and even worse footing, slipping out from under him. An arm inadvertently snagged around Khara's waist. The foot inadvertently caught against her ankle. Soon Zhol's toppling descent became hers as well. Time turned agonisingly slow as Zhol realised what was about to happen; an attempted apology was knocked clean out of his lungs as his back struck against the ground, and - a split second later - Khara landed against his chest.

For a few moments, Zhol was dazed, and when his eyes finally managed to open, all he saw was sky. What he felt was very different; an unfamiliar yet indescribably comfortable weight pressing down on his body, inadvertently pinning to the ground; not that he had any intention of moving right now. He risked a glance downwards, and his eyes met with Khara's, peering out from beneath her hair, and his lungs found themselves empty for a whole different reason. He couldn't have dragged his eyes away even if he'd wanted to, and he didn't. He swallowed against his desert-dry throat, at a total loss for what to say.

Pretty was an understatement.

by **Khara** on November 26th, 2014, 5:15 am

Everything had happened too fast. One moment she was just trying to be silly and childish and the next she had suddenly been quite startled as Khara had watched him begin to fall and then there had been a tangle of limbs and the ground coming up all of a sudden and then she had landed on top of him with what seemed like most of her hair covering her face.

Somehow she managed to not break her bow on the way down, and it rested on the ground next to them, her hand only barely touching it as her right arm had fallen between the two of them and across her chest. She pushed herself up a bit first, let her hand near the bow fall to the ground to help prop herself up more until she could fully free the right to shove back her hair. Only the longer strands cooperated in being put back behind her where they belonged, the shorter still mostly obscured her view. Still, she managed to look up in time to meet Zhol's eyes and felt the blush from earlier return. For a few moments she couldn't exactly bring herself to look away and Khara wasn't entirely sure that the bit of breathlessness she felt was from their tumble. A brief glance was cast at his lips, a guilty really really bad idea discarded and blamed on some want for retribution for his distraction rather than what she may actually have been thinking, and they raised once more until their gaze met again.

Rather than quickly dart away as her mind suddenly insisted, her eyes finally slowly lowered away from his and towards a patch on the ground near them as Khara let out an embarrassed laugh. "Okay yes, I shall be taking it back now. You are not so much good luck."

A small breath of air was let out and aimed upwards from pursed lips to flutter some of the strands in front of her eyes, hardly getting the clearing effect she was hoping for. Stubbornly she used the hand that wasn't keeping her from fully laying on him to brush them aside instead. Despite the fact part of her was shouting at her incorrigible behavior, Khara still didn't move away for a moment, instead she let a small grin form on her lips as she looked back to him.

"That does not mean that I do not like you to come to the ranges with me more, though. No one else tells me that I'm pretty, aftersides." Another bit of color rose in her cheeks as she looked away and slowly pulled herself away from him. Khara didn't retreat very far though, settling on sitting on the ground next to where Zhol lay. A small tug of concern pulled at her. "You did not get hurt, are you?"

"Nari" | "Common" | "Pavi"

by **Zhol** on November 26th, 2014, 5:31 am

|.

Don't go.

Zhol couldn't remember hearing a more mournful sound from inside his mind: not a demand or a plea, but a feeble utterance of resigned disappointment. He watched in slow motion as opportunities passed by, paralysed by indecision. He should have said something; should have insisted that everyone who didn't tell her she was beautiful was a fool; should have reached out to stop her; should have helped her to adjust her hair; should have kissed her instead of just staring at her lips in desperate curiosity. Thoughts rattled around in his mind like an enraged prisoner shaking the bars of his cage, screaming to be uttered, all constantly denied.

As she moved, as she retreated from being close to him, as she ripped herself away from contact like someone tearing off one of his limbs, his eyes focused on only one thing: a hand, so perilously, agonisingly close to his. It would take almost nothing to traverse those few inches, to take gentle hold of it, to be touching her again; but every thought to that end wrapped tighter around his chest, so much that he almost forgot what breath even felt like.

If you want her to hate you forever, his father's harsh, mocking tones uttered inside his mind, Then by all means, go ahead.

His eyes tumbled away, settling his gaze upwards towards the lightly clouded sky, wishing he could fall into that vast emptiness and lose himself; leave the ground and it's futile wanting behind. Khara's question lingered in his mind. Was he hurt?

"A little," he admitted; not in the sense that Khara had meant, but it was hard to describe what he felt inside as anything other than pain. "But I'll be okay."

by **Khara** on November 27th, 2014, 1:19 am

A small pout formed on her lips at Zhol's answer and Khara likewise let herself look away and up towards the sky. "I am sorry," she said softly, her hands rising to fidget with the fringe of the scarf once more. "I did not mean to be so hard."

She was suddenly overly aware of what her hands were doing, and while the motions didn't stop, Khara had to wonder why it seemed so natural. The girl hadn't owned a scarf in years and yet her hands retreating to it time and time again felt as normal to her as any of her usual motions between her fingers when she would mindlessly find them doing small things of their own accord. Her thoughts tried to wander back to when she had first been a Yasi, when she still had the scarf her mother had given her, to try and remember if that was when it had started, but nothing seemed to come from it.

Khara glanced at down at Zhol, the overly nervous sensation started in her stomach once more now that they were sitting still. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, but she couldn't help but see that same twinge of discomfort hinted in his features. It left her desperate to fill the growing silence, to distract him from whatever was causing the expression, to distract herself from blurting out what she knew she shouldn't say.

"Thank you, you know," she started, trying to hold back the wince at how feeble her voice sounded. A breath was drawn in before she began again as Khara drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them to keep herself from fidgeting too much. It only marginally worked as her fingertips interlaced and released, repeating the process in some semblance of rhythm with her words as she began speaking again.

"For agreeing to come here and for the archery things. It makes good memories come to me. I told you my mum brought me here to learn, right? It was before I was a Yasi, before they made me go live away from her. She had bought a small bow for me to learn with, smaller than a regular one that we used as Yasi and even they are not so big, I think. It was a toy than anything real, but they work just the same if you make some adjustments. I guess she knew someone who could do that sort of thing." Khara paused and let a small laugh leave her, her eyes briefly falling to the ground from where they had been watching wisps of clouds move in the wind. "Maybe it was even my father? I don't know. She never talked about him. I hope he was an Avora like her, I want to think maybe one day if I become an Avora I can meet him and he won't think I'm bad for having been a Chiet for so long. I think it is more likely he was one of the drudge, though? Otherwise I think she would have talked about him more. I asked her once and she didn't want to answer me. Maybe he was an Endal that made her do things and that's why she had me? That doesn't happen so much, though. I don't think she would have kept that from me, either. Having a parent who is an Endal isn't anything to be sad about."

A shrug of her shoulders finished the thought as her voice trailed off. Khara wasn't really sure why she suddenly was talking about the father she never knew. It wasn't a strange thing and it wasn't something she had ever felt bad about. That didn't stop her from wanting to know more about the man, though. It was a curiosity that eventually came to everyone, she guessed. Just like Khara had wondered if any of the Yasi she had met were her siblings. It wouldn't change anything, Khara figured, but it would be nice to know.

Her head raised as she looked back to the sky, a small tug of a smile reforming as she continued to speak, not entirely certain if Zhol was listening, or what he was making of it. He'd told her a bit about his family before, after all; about a twin sister that he had grown up with. That thought caused the smile to falter a bit before she caught site of the target out of the edge of her vision and it looped her back to what she had been speaking of before she could enter too morose of territory.

"Anyhows," Khara redirected, the word sounding strange to her. "She brought her own target here when we came, just like you, same colors and everything. You got it at the market, right? I think they've been making them that same way for years. But yes, she brought it and showed me how to shoot an arrow and then told me to try and it was so bad." She paused as a laugh escaped her at the memory. "I hit my arm with the string and the arrow just fell out of the bow to the ground a bit. It only made it so far that she just crouched down near me and reached out and picked it up off the grass. I remember I was so confused and my arm hurt but I still think I told her I made the arrow fly and was so excited and she just looked at me and said 'Yes, but only a little, now I'll show you how to make it go more.' or, something like that. I can hear it in my head in Nari but Common not so much, she never talked to me like this. But then she showed me how to do it better and I tried and tried for bells and she never got mad at me but just kept making little changes and by the end of the day, when Syna was going to sleep, that's when I finally hit the target."

A breath left her as she realized how quickly she had been speaking and she felt her skin flush once more as she realized she hadn't even tried to see if she was making any sense or if Zhol was even remotely interested. Her lower lip was bitten again as her golden eyes looked away from the sky and met with his green ones again, if only briefly.

"See? You are not so bad as you think at it and you have only a silly game scout to teach you. If you had my mum, you would have made it way faster, I think."

"Nari" | "Common" | "Pavi"

by **Zhol** on November 27th, 2014, 4:28 am

|.

It was more than Khara had ever told him about herself; voluntarily and in one go, at least. Zhol had learned things, inferred things, gleaned knowledge about her when she didn't realise she was giving it away. It was subterfuge of a sort; it wasn't that Khara was unwilling to share things about herself, she was just so sure of the fact that there wasn't anything worth knowing, and if Zhol ever tried to ask or encourage, her nervousness and embarrassment only deepened her silence. It was one of the things that eroded his hope that there ever could be anything; he wanted to know every single fact and detail about her, but she had never been comfortable enough around him to open up. Not until now, at least.

Zhol remained laying as he listened, peering up at the shapes of the clouds as Khara spoke, or letting his eyes closed so that his mind could turn her words into visions of imagination. He wasn't sure what Khara had looked like when she was younger - he ignored the idle if you had a child together, you could find out thought that drifted through his mind - but his mind made it's best guess; imagined the tiny Inarta, the tiny bow that still somehow seemed oversized in her tiny hands; but instead of some Inarta approximation of what Khara's mother might have looked like, his mind cast his own mother instead. From everything that Khara had said, scattered throughout the time that he'd known her, her mother reminded him of his own; tough, harsh at times, but infinitely caring underneath it all. Zhol knew that desperate desire to please and impress a mother like that; knew the gut-wrenching agony of failing to do so. He hadn't meant to dredge up those kind of memories; relief washed through him as Khara assured that for a change, Zhol had caused her to recall something other than past sorrows.

The talk of her father was difficult to relate to, though. In Endrykas, family was important; knowledge of one's father was an essential part of who you were, and where you lived. That Khara didn't know her own, and that his identity was only a minor, casual curiosity was something he couldn't quite grasp; and at the same time filled him with a certain amount of jealousy. He wondered how much different, how much better his life would have been, if he had been raised here in Wind Reach, blissfully unaware of who his father had been.

Knowing his luck, he supposed, and his lack of affinity for any sort of useful skill, he'd probably have wound up a Dek, and never met Khara at all. It was a strange, bittersweet realisation: that everything in his life up until now, sad and painful and frustrating as so much of it might have been, had led him to here, laying atop Skyinarta with someone whose friendship he wouldn't exchange or sacrifice for all the wealth or all the other joy in the world; no amount of anything could ever be worth as much to him as her.

"My mother never taught me anything like that," Zhol replied. He forced himself not to rebuke Khara's self-critical statement, for fear of what embarrassing near-admission his tongue might offer this time. "She taught me the basics of glyphing, those magical symbols you see sometimes? I never really understood why at the time; I suppose she must have wanted to teach me more magic, but never really got the chance." He smiled wistfully. "I remember when I was small, the first time she explained to Dinah and me what magic was. We had these little -" He struggled for how to translate the Pavi delicacy into Common. "- cakes, I suppose you'd call them? Little bundles of oats and syrup that I suppose are my favourite food from back home. Maybe I do have a favourite after all."

An embarrassed smile ghosted across his features. "Dinah had finished hers, but I was always slow, always trying to make mine last as long as possible. Dinah wanted more, and so she kept trying to sneak mine while I wasn't looking; but Mama saw her, and she cast a shield spell around the plate? Dinah was so shocked when she touched it and it zapped her hand away; Mama glared at me for laughing, and Dinah gave me the exact same scary glare, but I couldn't help it, the face she made was so funny. It was a special sort of shield, one that let me pass through but no one else; I guess that's when I started getting fascinated by magic, but my Darda had other ideas. He wanted a son who could fight, or craft, not one who could waste time waving his hands on all that magic shyke -"[/color]

Zhol grimaced at the way he'd slipped not just into Pavi, but into an approximation of his father's gruff, harsh tone as well. "Darda never had all that much regard for magic. I guess he just struggled to understand it, and he didn't trust what he didn't understand. Maybe that's why I wanted to learn magic so bad. If I could understand something that he couldn't, then maybe I'd finally be better at something."

He could feel the same old creeping anger beginning to form in reaction to those thoughts about his father. He bundled them up and shoved them as deeply inside as he could; his head fell to the side, enough to glance in Khara's direction, letting a smile form on his features to convince her and himself that there was nothing to feel sad about.

"Mama taught Dinah though. Lillah, too. She's my oldest sister; half-sister, anyway. We have the same father, but her mother was Darda's first wife. She died when my baby sister, Yahalla, was small. She -" He hesitated, acutely aware of how confusing all this talk of families must have been for Khara; for someone who had no concept of family at all, his must have sounded very strange indeed. "Okay so, in Endrykas, a man is allowed to have more than one wife; more than one person who is the mother of his children, and those mothers and their children live together in the same pavilion, the same tent. Mine was called Emberwing; so back in Endrykas, I was called Zhol Emberwing, my twin was Dinah Emberwing, and so on. When a man and a woman decide to have children together, usually they get married, which is a sort of legal thing that tells everyone that they belong to each other. The woman moves to the man's pavilion and so her name changes to match. I don't know what my Mama's name was before she came to Endrykas, but she became Etha Emberwing when she did."

He paused, hoping to give that information a chance to sink in. His insides squirmed, not with discomfort but with unexpected excitement; something about this, about being able to open up to Khara about who he was, to let her know all the parts of himself, was euphoric. Maybe, he supposed, in the deepest, quietest corner of his mind in a thought so guilty and reluctant that it was barely more than a whisper, of Khara knew everything there was to know about him, there was the slimmest ghost of a chance that she might find enough to change the way that she felt.

"My father is Dardanus Emberwing. His first wife was Emaryn, and she had six kids all together. Lillah is the oldest, and she's awesome. She was a Stormwarden? A chosen of Zulrav, and she could control storms and monsoons. She had more of an affinity for magic than any of Emaryn's other children, so she grew up pretty close to Mama, who taught her a lot of the stuff she needed to know. She was the only one that didn't treat Dinah and I differently. All of the others looked down on us for not having the same mother, but Lillah was always nice to us, always keeping an eye out for us whenever she was around. Marhaus was next; he was one of the defenders of the city, and I guess you could say that he's the one who taught me how to use a sword, although -" He winced. "- was more a matter of me learning to protecting myself from him than him actually trying to help, I think."

A deep frown began to form across his face, realising how unpleasant the memories could get if he dug around too deeply; but it was too late to back out of explaining now. He forced himself to be less specific, to dodge past the more unpleasant of his siblings. "Then there's Elia, and Durandal, and Annora. Elia was pretty much the perfect Drykas woman; Darda married her off to some other pavilion as soon as she was old enough, and she had a whole bunch of kids. Durandal was the best crafter out of all of us; kind of a big deal for us Ruby Clan folks, and I think that's why he was always Darda's favourite, always getting the best stuff, the most forgiveness. Annora basically worshipped the ground that Marhaus walked on; she was wanting to follow in his footsteps and become a warrior when I left, but I don't know if she ever followed through on that."

His frown slackened, a smile taking it's place. "And then there's Yahalla. She reminds me of you, a little. She has fiery hair like yours, and she always seemed a little nervous all the time, but she's one of the sweetest and most caring people I have ever met, never had a bad word to say about anyone, or anything. I think you'd like her, and she'd like you."

They all would, his mind silently added. But not as much as I do.

Closed On Top of the World (Zhol)