Closed The Place Where We Last Met

[Khida]

Fall 45, 512 AV the edge of dusk Red-tinged light cut between a drift of clouds which hung just above the horizon, painted vividly orange by approaching dusk. The rays of light turned the city into a montage of golden blocks on one side, and long stretching shadows on the other. Dogs yapped to one another about inscrutable canine things, their conversations carrying -- or perhaps conducted -- across the breadth of the city. Comparing dinners, perhaps, or discussing the inscrutable vagaries of their masters, or exchanging imprecations about horses for all Khida knew. They weren't alarmed, and that was all she cared of the matter; though even if they had been, the falcon might well have not given it much concern. For her part, she sat silent vigil to the sunset, watching it all pass by from the isolated vantage of a tent's centerpole. The pole itself lay beneath a covering of waxed canvas, but its wood provided sturdy support nonetheless, her talons dimpling the stiff fabric stretched across it. She had punctured it a few times, particularly when first landing, but the peregrine spared neither concern nor even thought for that. Instead, she mused idly over her day, the satisfaction of a full stomach, the brisk air of an altogether unremarkable autumn evening. She had completed her evening preening already, with a half bell yet to sunset as humans would reckon it; for her part, Khida counted the time not at all. It passed, that was all that really mattered. She passed it tonight in watching, as she so often did. If she read its inhabitants' actions correctly, the tent the falcon now sat atop, no more than a dark silhouette at its apex, would not be there tomorrow. There had been a great deal of activity in preceding bells, of collecting things in bundles and bags, counting inventory and running back and forth with parcels. Khida's experience of the ever-changing city suggested this was all a prelude to their morning departure. A bit of a pity, in the falcon's consideration -- she had grown somewhat fond of this perch, the height of the pole and its position near the edge of the nomadic city giving her a good view of both humans and grasslands. Indeed, her earlier meal had been sighted not from the air, but while she sat upon this very point. But time passed, and things changed. She wouldn't miss the tent too very much, as there were hundreds more to be had, and the occupants now preparing for sleep meant nothing to the Kelvic. For now, she would watch the sun sink towards the horizon, listening to the chatter of dogs and occasional horse-noises as the day drew towards its close. Human noises, too, as the tent-dwellers murmured to one another in the evening's fading light, sounds as incomprehensible as those of the other creatures. Really, it was altogether quite... unfulfilling. Khida felt an odd restlessness which had nothing to do with traveling or physical activity, with food or shelter or any of the simple needs of a wild thing. She found herself strangely envious of the people in the pavilion beneath her, resenting the ease of their companionship. And yet she continued to hesitate, to carry on as falcon alone, haunting the city's outskirts -- this despite Gin's promise to teach her rudimentary Pavi, reducing the height of the language barrier between these Drykas and the Kelvic. For all that she had moved on with the nomadic city, now traveled some ways from where they had started the season, it wasn't just any of those people whose company Khida desired.

[Colt]

Dusk. An inscrutable thing. So natural, yet so valued. Union of night and day, spilling fire across the dome of the sky, and yet its beauty was short-lived, a mere flicker in comparison to the rest of time. Here one instant, gone the next.

The nameless man had long since abandoned his sporadic weave through the tents. He sat atop his horse, face a blank slate, and the beast that bore him was allowed to travel where he wished. His rider gave no directions other than the occasional encouragement to keep moving, to keep going anywhere. To stop would be to give up, and where would that leave him?

Sometimes people would whisper behind their hands, gesturing at him while trying to look like they weren’t. The city was a community, and the news had spread quickly that the team of Webbers had left with five but returned with six. The mysterious wild man and his stallion with the glassbeak’s temper had found themselves subjects of marvel as they trekked around the city. Sometimes the horse cared. The man never did.

The tents thinned, and he realized that they were approaching the fringes of the city. Beyond that was little but grassy wilderness. Akaidras had been suppressed by the walls of cloth and tapestries, and could feel well enough that he and his rider could both do with open air. The open air that he could never remember not knowing.

The sky was ablaze as they made their way to the crest of a small rise. That’s nice, he thought. And when Akaidras came to a stop, he urged him no farther. What was the point? There was little left to search.

It was an odd feeling. A little bit exhaustion, resignation and a soreness he couldn’t quite locate. He had realized the true extent of his reliance on the she-falcon when he had first become lost, and adaptation was violent and difficult. It wasn’t her hunting skill, though that was a painful change. It lay somewhere deeper. Companionship. Intelligence. Accusational glares. The sense of not being alone.

Oh, there had been the team, but he had soon realized that besides race, he had little in common with the other Drykas. Their insistence on facades and the way they kept talking even when they had nothing to say had baffled him to no end. If there was anything he had become acquainted with on the plains, it was silence. Silence was a language in itself, as beautiful and complex as any poet’s song. Of everything, he missed her silence. Not the empty ones, but the ones where a thousand words could pass between them in a heartbeat. Talking about the weather before she’d take to the sky, about who got what heart or liver or laughing together over Akaidras’ antics. All without a single word.

The stallion nickered softly and took a step towards the open grasses. The man put a hand on the beast’s neck, inferring the attempt to cheer him up. The light was fading, but it was there. If they acted now, perhaps there could be one last hunt in the day.

[Khida]

Feathers fluffed out against the evening's coming chill, the falcon began to turn her thoughts to sleep. Less for sake of weariness, than for lack of other needs requiring her attention or activity. But she did not close her eyes quite yet, the light not having faded from the land -- and so Khida caught movement at the edge of her field of view, an equine shape whose dark coat drank down the sun's light. In this city, a horse was unremarkable. Even as the day approached its close, a horse and rider picking their way through the city was unremarkable. But their profiles were strikingly familiar, the way the horse moved, the way the rider held himself. As she focused her attention on them, the features of the rider only clinched her suspicions, his identity: him. Silence would not convey what she had to say to him now. No, silence wouldn't do the job at all. The peregrine's scolding cries cut across the background noise of hounds and horses and humans, even before she finished the act of leaping from her perch, wings stretching out to grab the air. That hubbub ebbed in response to her sudden, strident complaints, other ears turned towards the sounds in surprise. But she cared about only one listener, the one who had reappeared when least expected. She swooped down from her perch, beating wings quickly regaining that height and more, the better to fly above the intervening tents and cross the distance between them. For all the ferocity of her calls, she did not dive at man or horse; rather, the falcon wove a circle in the air about them, all the while giving him rather quite a number of pieces of her mind. He left. He left her behind. She couldn't find him. And he took so very long about coming back! Or so Khida might have said, if she'd been human-shape. As it was, when she felt she'd made her displeasure most clear, the falcon came to rest on the nearest tent-pole and glowered at him, feathers fluffed once more -- now with irritation rather than in the interest of warmth.

[Colt]

He nudged the horse forward, but Akaidras only took one step before stopping. Something was odd. The rider watched the horse’s swiveling ears, and it was a mere few seconds before something else entirely garnered both of their complete and undivided attentions.

The angry screaming that shattered the air was unmistakably that of a bird’s. Of a bird he’d heard many times before.

Akaidras wheeled, ears straining forward and tail high in excitement. A blue-gray form was soaring over the tents, screeching displeasure. The intelligent glint in its eye was unmistakable as it rose to circle them. It was her.

The rider almost fell off when his mount rose to two hind legs, pawing the air for balance and trying to get his nose as close to the soaring bird as he possibly could. He remained poised for what seemed like an eternity, then returned all four feet to the ground as the falconess took rest on the rim of a nearby tent.

While Akaidras arched his neck in greeting, the man atop him was still. He gazed at the she-falcon, almost unable to believe it. Had she really waited for him? Had she waited for him this whole time?

He slid silently from the stallion’s back, who pranced about and threw his head happily. The man continued to watch her, read her. The livid daggers she glared at him were welcomed warmly, welcomed even with the guilt they lay upon his back. For even as the new weight was given to him, another, greater weight was lifted: he wasn’t alone anymore.

He crept slowly forward, stance small with submission but eyes remaining fixed upon her until he came to a stop beneath her perch. She was ruffled with anger, but his guilt was equally matched by his relief at seeing her again.

He chirped softly at her, a small, contrite sound that was somewhere between apologetic and happy.

[Khida]

The horse pranced and danced and seemed happy even to the falcon's eye, though she had never studied his behavior with the same interest she turned upon the man. But while she liked the horse well enough, for a horse, he wasn't the one whose good feeling mattered most. Her focus remained on the man now dismounted, watching him pad slowly up beneath her perch. She fidgeted her weight from one foot to the other, a mannerism which belied her true feelings; while the glare was sincere enough, it took effort for Khida to maintain an aura of offense in the face of her own relief and rising elation. He did come back. The man chirped at her, and the falcon grumbled in response, a low mutter whose component sounds remained rather indistinct. She continued to look at him for a moment, then turned her head, holding out the edge of a wing and busying herself with preening its long primary feathers as if that were the most important task at this moment. The act was one suggesting tacit forgiveness -- or at least that the peregrine was willing to move on and not continue nursing a grudge, provided he didn't repeat his offense. It had the double advantage of serving as a mask for the true weight of her relief. After a few moments, she turned enough to regard him from of the edge of her vision, her features in profile to his perspective. She settled her wings back against her sides, feathers flattening down in a more neutral mode. Khida tipped her head so as to view him with both eyes, then whistled at him, low and quiet and long. The sound was too small to truly describe the long days which had passed in his absence, the dreary weight of solitude -- all the worse for the sheer number of people about which were not him -- but not even human words could have done that justice, in her opinion.

[Colt]

The falconess did not seem interested in forgiving and forgetting. At least, not quite yet.

She shuffled on the tentpole, and he signed apology. She grumbled grudgingly at his chirp, gaze still angry and perhaps a bit hurt. She looked at him for a few more heartbeats that felt a bit longer than they should have, then turned away and busied herself with her wing.

A small bit of his guilt lifted. Perhaps he could earn his way back into her good graces.

He wasn’t sure if she had picked up on Grassland Sign in her days soaring over the city of tents, but if there really was a language barrier between them than it was small enough to overcome.

He chirped again for attention. Tomorrow. He wasn’t quite sure if he could accurately convey fish to her in the Sign, so he combined their personal words for prey and water followed by many.

Tomorrow, I will give you many water-prey.

Their relationship had begun with food, and so if he had to build the entire thing from the ground again then that was where he would start.

[Khida]

It was an open question, as always, how much he understood of her calls and body language, particularly when it came to matters complex or abstract; just as it was an open question of how much she lost from what he meant to convey, at times. But the man then signed through a sequence of familiar gestures, ones whose significance she had learned well over the summer. A communication which was simple, straightforward, easy. Plus, Khida approved whole-heartedly of the intention it conveyed. She perked up at the combination of signs which could only refer to fish, as she generally did. An odd preference for a falcon, but there it was. Khida had no way to tell him don't do it again as such, the one complex phrase she particularly wanted to emphasize right now; setting that aside, she chirped positively back at the man, willing to let the past be past and carry on with the now. Now, they were all together again. The falcon tensed a moment, then launched herself from her perch, flying over his head and ruffling his hair with the soft wash of displaced air. After a short distance more, she banked around into an arc, her flight describing a small circle around his position -- a holding pattern, implying a willingness to follow his lead. At the same time, it also suggested a directive, the sense of okay, enough standing here, go do something. The hard part was conveying what she might want him to do -- but in this instance, Khida didn't actually care. Whether he wanted to use the last of the day's light to try a hunt, or settle in to roost, or... In any case, she was content to be in company once more. Where he had disappeared to was another mystery, but what did it matter, when he was back?

[Colt]

Her interest was immediately piqued at the mention of fish. That was a good sign, as was the chirp directed at him, as far as he could tell void of malice or anger. It was a good chirp, and he returned with a hopeful chirp of his own.

The falcon leapt from the tent-pole and swooped over him, tousling his hair with the wind she claimed and sending shivers of warmth down his spine.

Akaidras whickered and appeared at the man’s side. Above, the falcon had taken to an arc, anxious for anything to be done. It didn’t matter now, as long as they did it together.

The hunter was struck with a strong sense of yes, this is right.

His hands were itching for something, anything to do alongside his family again. With sun fading and setting the land aflame, there was one option that stood in the forefront of his mind.

He erupted into a sprint towards the plains, uttering a call that had been silent, in his mind, for far too long.

ke-ke-ke-ke-ke-ke-ke

A hunt not for hunger, not for survival, but for them.

[Khida]

The man cried a summons and charged out into the grasses, away from the city -- away from the tents, and the horses, and all those other things which belonged to people. The falcon too turned her back on those things, wings beating rapidly to overtake the man on the way out into the grasslands. For a little while, they could pretend it was just them and the savanna, like it had been a season past. She whistled down at him, then kept right on going, surging ahead some distance and climbing upwards at the same time. Khida wanted height, the better to see; when she felt her position was appropriate, in all dimensions, the falcon began flying a search pattern, looking for anything in the grasses below which might resemble prey. This late in the evening wasn't the best time to hunt, as the low sun painted the stalk tops in vivid colors but left the grassy depths in darkening shadow. It was harder for her to see such quarry as they most often hunted -- things which he could spook into the air -- under these conditions; still, that didn't stop the falcon from trying. She tracked back and forth, high above the grasses, looking for any odd shapes in the darkness, any flicker of motion. Of course, by this time, little was moving, at least among bird species; nightjars and owls were rousing, or would soon, but most others were settling in to roost. Khida ducked lower to more closely examine a displaced shadow, something which moved and then froze -- if it was there at all. She lost it in the grassy shadows almost immediately, but wrote it off as probably a rabbit. She continued looking, flapping back up to her preferred cruising level and turning to overfly another stretch of grass. The falcon looked back often, to the familiar yet unfamiliar sight of her partner making his own way through the grasses; it had been too long since she saw him there. Far too long. Khida stretched her wings against the evening breeze, all but basking in the outward glow of the evening sun and the inner glow of her uncomplicated world set to rights -- at least for this short span of time.

[Colt]

The veil of grass closed, hiding the city in a curtain of gold. If he tried, he could pretend that it wasn’t there at all.

She wheeled and whistled, claiming sky and pulling ahead. She was rising, higher and higher to see the plains that spread endlessly around them. And as she banked to search on one direction, he turned to cover another. He slid from Akaidras’ back and hit the ground loping, eyes suddenly glued to the ground for something, anything that might resemble a trail.

Here and there he would see a flitting shadow or single track, but neither were enough to draw him from his search. The presence of the city caused most creatures to go into hiding, and so there was little to follow. But the hunter still cared not; hunting here, with her, was more important that prey. Once more he flicked his eyes skyward, some part of him fearing that she was an illusion summoned by a desperate mind. But still her shadow soared, and again he smiled to himself.

And at that exact moment he stumbled across a grouse trail.

He threw his head up with a warbling signal. He had found something.

He returned to his pace, hunched lower and tensed. He scanned each side of the trail as he followed it, searching for paths that branched off or even the dark shapes of the ground-birds as they settled in for the night.