.
31 Winter, 515 AV
There wasn’t often occasion that the Darkwind pavilion gathered together to work as one on the small, truly necessary tasks any pavilion would need to complete in order to survive the hard lifestyle the Drykas people made their own, but this was one of those days, and the stretching arm of the sun was beginning to extend when a large number of the pavilion were beginning to depart the city.
Ruari, one of the number to leave, was preparing Rhoswen for travel. She brushed her horse’s long hair and braided it, to the best of her ability with hands shaking from the cold and nimble fingers aching, and groomed her coat, both of which were daily processes for Ruari, but she found them specially important on those days she would find herself some time outside of Endrykas. She only ever really went with company; Ruari was not combat-savvy, as many of her pavilion tried to be, but she wanted to learn. She wanted that skill, so she could be useful to them when they would require it.
So, she would join them here, today, and finally learn that which they were going to teach the younger children that day. How she missed these lessons, Ruari wouldn’t actually quite know; perhaps sometime in the past, she had fallen ill and been unable to participate, instead biding her time with learning medicine.
It was time, though.
She saddled Rhoswen with her yvas, mirroring what her father, brothers, and a couple of her younger cousins were doing at that moment, and with the gracious assistance of a strategically placed stump that had been hauled along with their camp since time immemorial, Ruari mounted her strider with a lack of finesse and training that spoke of the state of her skill with horsemanship. She was unlike her family in this regard, and maybe even unlike her people. That would all need to change, and Ruari would work on that this day.
They made their way through Endrykas silently; their pavilion was a quiet one, watched and rumoured about, but without the ankal that made them bitter, they were not scorned so badly. Iollan’s lot was not to ride with his brother’s children, but to repair the damage he had done when he took the mantle of ankal from his father, a man that had done his best to return them to their old strength only to have that all laid bare when Iollan stole it from him.
The Darkwind were bad luck, and Ruari was born into a family of quiet men and women with too much unspoken grief and wrath to make life easy. She knew that no life was easy on the sea of grass, though, and she held nothing against her father’s brother for taking from their family the gradual swell of good fortune that had been coming their way. Like all those that suffered bad luck, they simply believed they had to turn that around themselves.
So, they were quiet as they left Endrykas, but those that they were familiar with were greeted as old friends and glad sights in the soft way that the Darkwinds did their business. They knew tanners and butchers and veterinarians and falconers, and these people stopped the sombre procession so that Cidhna or his sons or even Ruari and her cousins and siblings could share tidings with their friends. Word of pregnancies and marriages and good fortune came to them, and even without leaving Endrykas were the group rewarded with two dead hares bound together that found themselves tethered to Cidhna’s moody strider.
On the sea of grass, the horses thundered over the land with speed that would likely have astounded the savages that sometimes found themselves in Endrykas. For Ruari, though, this was something she was familiar with; striders moved faster than the horses traders and travelers used, and they were better suited for the lifestyles their Drykas companions had. Even so, she was uncomfortable; her inner thighs were cramping from the way she sat in the yvas, as if she had learned once to ride a saddle and was trying to compensate for the lack of foothold and reigns, but that was silly. Ruari hadn’t ridden properly since the autumn season, and she was beginning to feel it, especially in her lower back, but this she worked with by leaning lower against her mare’s neck and loosening the deathgrip she had on her withers.
From the front, Cidhna laughed back at his daughter. “Riding doesn’t have to be so painful,” he said, making Ruari’s face burn. It really didn’t, but Ruari discovered that it was easier to find it painful. She didn’t seem to get comfortable like this, and Rhoswen certainly found herself in similar discomfort as she vocalised her complaints with her rider, and Ruari found herself apologising frequently enough that she felt as if Rhoswen were becoming frustrated with her by the way her horse tossed her head and whinnied. Ruari attempted to soothe her horse, stroking up and down her long neck and saying quietly comforting words that did help in calming the horse, but that Ruari was sensible enough to know would not necessarily continue to work if she continued on like this.
Thankfully, they were beginning to slow, and Ruari (with a quiet apology to Rhoswen once again), loosened the tight, uncomfortable, grip she had on her mare’s sides, and Rhoswen shook her head. In the internal dialogue that Ruari kept with herself as a means to put words to the actions of her horse, she took the way her horse acted as chiding the Drykas girl with her mishandling of the journey beyond Endrykas, and Ruari was so enthralled with this inner rapport that she didn’t actually know where Cidhna was leading them, except that it was to hunt, and she trusted him not to lead them astray.
He didn’t, as she knew he wouldn’t. He brought the lot of them to a sizable copse of trees and the hunters at the forefront, Cidhna and his sons, his scout-daughter and her husband, began the fine practice of finding and stalking their prey.
1028 words
.
31 Winter, 515 AV
There wasn’t often occasion that the Darkwind pavilion gathered together to work as one on the small, truly necessary tasks any pavilion would need to complete in order to survive the hard lifestyle the Drykas people made their own, but this was one of those days, and the stretching arm of the sun was beginning to extend when a large number of the pavilion were beginning to depart the city.
Ruari, one of the number to leave, was preparing Rhoswen for travel. She brushed her horse’s long hair and braided it, to the best of her ability with hands shaking from the cold and nimble fingers aching, and groomed her coat, both of which were daily processes for Ruari, but she found them specially important on those days she would find herself some time outside of Endrykas. She only ever really went with company; Ruari was not combat-savvy, as many of her pavilion tried to be, but she wanted to learn. She wanted that skill, so she could be useful to them when they would require it.
So, she would join them here, today, and finally learn that which they were going to teach the younger children that day. How she missed these lessons, Ruari wouldn’t actually quite know; perhaps sometime in the past, she had fallen ill and been unable to participate, instead biding her time with learning medicine.
It was time, though.
She saddled Rhoswen with her yvas, mirroring what her father, brothers, and a couple of her younger cousins were doing at that moment, and with the gracious assistance of a strategically placed stump that had been hauled along with their camp since time immemorial, Ruari mounted her strider with a lack of finesse and training that spoke of the state of her skill with horsemanship. She was unlike her family in this regard, and maybe even unlike her people. That would all need to change, and Ruari would work on that this day.
***
They made their way through Endrykas silently; their pavilion was a quiet one, watched and rumoured about, but without the ankal that made them bitter, they were not scorned so badly. Iollan’s lot was not to ride with his brother’s children, but to repair the damage he had done when he took the mantle of ankal from his father, a man that had done his best to return them to their old strength only to have that all laid bare when Iollan stole it from him.
The Darkwind were bad luck, and Ruari was born into a family of quiet men and women with too much unspoken grief and wrath to make life easy. She knew that no life was easy on the sea of grass, though, and she held nothing against her father’s brother for taking from their family the gradual swell of good fortune that had been coming their way. Like all those that suffered bad luck, they simply believed they had to turn that around themselves.
So, they were quiet as they left Endrykas, but those that they were familiar with were greeted as old friends and glad sights in the soft way that the Darkwinds did their business. They knew tanners and butchers and veterinarians and falconers, and these people stopped the sombre procession so that Cidhna or his sons or even Ruari and her cousins and siblings could share tidings with their friends. Word of pregnancies and marriages and good fortune came to them, and even without leaving Endrykas were the group rewarded with two dead hares bound together that found themselves tethered to Cidhna’s moody strider.
***
On the sea of grass, the horses thundered over the land with speed that would likely have astounded the savages that sometimes found themselves in Endrykas. For Ruari, though, this was something she was familiar with; striders moved faster than the horses traders and travelers used, and they were better suited for the lifestyles their Drykas companions had. Even so, she was uncomfortable; her inner thighs were cramping from the way she sat in the yvas, as if she had learned once to ride a saddle and was trying to compensate for the lack of foothold and reigns, but that was silly. Ruari hadn’t ridden properly since the autumn season, and she was beginning to feel it, especially in her lower back, but this she worked with by leaning lower against her mare’s neck and loosening the deathgrip she had on her withers.
From the front, Cidhna laughed back at his daughter. “Riding doesn’t have to be so painful,” he said, making Ruari’s face burn. It really didn’t, but Ruari discovered that it was easier to find it painful. She didn’t seem to get comfortable like this, and Rhoswen certainly found herself in similar discomfort as she vocalised her complaints with her rider, and Ruari found herself apologising frequently enough that she felt as if Rhoswen were becoming frustrated with her by the way her horse tossed her head and whinnied. Ruari attempted to soothe her horse, stroking up and down her long neck and saying quietly comforting words that did help in calming the horse, but that Ruari was sensible enough to know would not necessarily continue to work if she continued on like this.
Thankfully, they were beginning to slow, and Ruari (with a quiet apology to Rhoswen once again), loosened the tight, uncomfortable, grip she had on her mare’s sides, and Rhoswen shook her head. In the internal dialogue that Ruari kept with herself as a means to put words to the actions of her horse, she took the way her horse acted as chiding the Drykas girl with her mishandling of the journey beyond Endrykas, and Ruari was so enthralled with this inner rapport that she didn’t actually know where Cidhna was leading them, except that it was to hunt, and she trusted him not to lead them astray.
He didn’t, as she knew he wouldn’t. He brought the lot of them to a sizable copse of trees and the hunters at the forefront, Cidhna and his sons, his scout-daughter and her husband, began the fine practice of finding and stalking their prey.
1028 words
.
