18 Spring, 500 AV
Morning
Morning
Of all the seasons Dravite favoured spring the most. The landscape seemed to alter overnight, flowers bloomed, sprouts shot up from the earth still softened by the winter showers, and all the small insects that burrowed down into the soil to survive the cold, slowly started to reappear. The air was warm, the birds were singing, and the young Drykas boy of seven couldn’t help but smile and wonder if Caiyha had visited the plain while he had been fast asleep and dreaming.
One of the older boys had been left to watch the herd while the warriors and gathers went out for the morning in search of food and game. Dravite sat up on his bedroll and watched some of the children in the pavilion playing on a slight rise a few metres away from camp. The Windborne Pavilion had once been known by the name Blackwater and had been an off-branch of the Diamond Clan where it was now run by a member of the Emerald Clan who seemed to be changing everything Dravite remembered. His father had died only two years ago and the boy kept dreaming of foul-play.
Some of the younger women were occupied with their knot-works; Dravite had been forced to try his hand at such once or twice but was far too spirited and highly-strung to sit for long periods of time playing with thread, hair, or dry-grass as some of the children were encouraged to practice on. His grandfather Tal’o Ker Blackwater was the only adult still in camp; he didn’t go hunting as much as the others as he was blind, but not useless. The man had the hearing of a fox and when Dravite finally sprung up from his bedroll the old man piped up, “Don’t go beyond the green marker.”
Dravite looked out across the Sea of Grass and spotted the marker about fifty feet from camp. He was always tempted to venture beyond but had experienced the consequences of such poorly planned actions. His mother had smacked him so hard up the back of the head one night after sneaking out past the green marker that he mistakenly bit clean through the tip of his tongue. Since that night he had developed a strong Drykas drawl and spoke so fast that some of the pavilion eldere struggled to comprehend anything he said.
He would not go beyond the marker; in fact Dravite had stayed very close to camp ever since that night only two seasons ago. His long, gawky legs and too-big feet carried him quickly to the fresh bed of spring grass the striders had already managed to strip. He got down low on his hands and knees and edged forward on his belly like a fat, lazy lizard and crept towards the other children who were playing on the rise. There wasn’t much in the way of cover other than the dry grass the striders had ignored in favour of the lush green shoots, so Dravite dug his fingers into the loose soil and smeared his hands, arms, and face with earth. His wheat coloured hair made for brilliant camouflage, unbeknown to him, and the mud on his skin made the boy look like something that had just crawled out of the bog with the rest of the insects.
Satisfied with his makeshift disguise, Dravite got up on all fours and squatted, watching his unsuspecting victims as if they were wild-cat prey, and he the cat. He imagined he was one of the hunting cats that had gone out with the warriors, creeping towards the playing children on all fours; his fingers tentative in their movements and positioning between the long threads of grass still kissed with morning dew. As he edged closer and closer to the group, he steadied his breathing and focused on the voices, trying to make out what his friends were talking about; eavesdropping as it were.
The boy found it difficult not to give himself away with a giggle or an ill-timed step. The grass rustled as he readied himself, but just before he could pounce one of the girls spotted him and screamed, “Drav!”And just like that, his cover had been blown.
Dravite got to his feet and brushed some of the dirt from his narrow limbs as his peers turned to glance at him, gawking like a flock of Glassbeaks struck dumb by the mating-display of two wild pigs. “What do you want?” The ringleader squawked, the little dark-haired girl who had spotted him first.
“I just want to play,” Dravite admitted and knotted his fingers together behind his back, the big toe on his left foot drilling a hole into the earth as he awaited her response.
“Well you can’t play!” The girl huffed very indignantly. “We’re playing mothers and fathers and you don’t listen to us!”
“Please!” Dravite spoke up, “I’ll even sing the children to sleep this time,” he lied, he hated this game, hated their silly rules and boring ideals. Children often had very strange ideas about the roles of their parents, and as they learned firstly by imitating, a step Dravite had skipped, he found no point in playing out the silly tasks his mother saw to all day; but desperately longed to socialise.
“Go away, Dravite,” a boy three years his senior interjected, “You look as dirty as a strider, why don’t you go roll in the mud with them.”
The girls all giggled and laughed at which Dravite looked a little put out and turned to march down the slope, chin tucked, shoulders tight, arms whipped against his sides like little matchsticks; seething. Why won’t they play with me, he asked himself, throwing himself down in the shade of the pavilion’s biggest tent, arms folded, his facial features screwed up as if he had just been forced to down something sour, though rejection tasted just as bitter. His mood, however, was like a passing storm, all rain one minute and blue skies the next.
