Closed [Hunters Allegiance] Dismissed missives (Taylani)

[Isedan Autumnrun]

Timestamp: Fall 60, 513

Ninety days to date had passed and still her heart would not lift, the tawny haired woman walking silently through the tents and ropes, men and horses. She swore she could hear Him still, whispering softly in her ear, his hand curving at the bottom of her spine. The very memory and illusion brought tears to the grey-gold eyes of the woman as she ducked beneath another tent line and paused to let one of the grand horses pass.

Some of the beasts had snorted uneasily at her though these were few and only one since the capture had actually bucked her off its back, the Drykas wondering at the horses behavior but simply placing her on another until they reached the raiding camps all those days and nights ago. Issy had never had an issue with horses once they knew what she was and acclimated to her, but frankly, she wanted little to do with any of these. She wanted little to do with anything here, for that matter, weaving through yet another tangle of ropes between tents so she could avoid the crowds of strange faces and braided hair, making her way towards the baying and growling and screeching cries of beasts of labor.

Cotice had said to choose one but he had given her no coin, neglecting to inform the woman that these animals were not bought with mizas but with heart and instinct. How was she to get one then? She did not really talk to any as the members of Autumnrun had learned, her despondent nature unusual to the tight knit but altogether devastated family. Tudav had not even come with her this time, trusting the woman to the chore. As sad as she was it was a wonder Issy had not yet tried to run, but then, she simply hadn't the courage to strike out like that, not without Lukyc who now was gone.

The woman came to the collection of dogs and cats and hunting birds at last, the barrage of noises hard on her sensitive ears and making her wince a little for she was more used to quiet. One hand slipped to her belly uneasily and she frowned, eyes closing and opening as if to still a surge of displeasure in her bowels. The moment passed and Issy crossed to the hunting companions, glinting eyes passing over them morosely. How easy it would be to just strip of her garb, shift, and fade into these creatures, let nature do what it would with her. But she hadn't even the heart to feed herself, food forced more often than not when things in the pavilion grew too quiet. Even when Cotice did his husbands duty, she responded little. He was not in it for her pleasure, for her happiness. He needed his heir; what would become of her then?

A bump against her hand and a cold nose in her palm made her turn her head down where she spied an odd looking dog with large ears and a multi-color patterend coat. She had never seen a Dynakuva before and this one did not seem shy or agitated at her presence. A twitch came to her lips, slight, making them turn up at the corners for a brief moment before she was kneeling, one hand holding the underside of the dogs face while the other stroked its brow. The animal was handsome, but young. He was in a pen with other young, yet to be fully trained, Dynakuva, most yipping and playing, some being idolized by other Drykas for purchse. But this one had come to her. It served a worthwhile distraction as she pet its head and cooed softly to it.

"A very sweet thing you are to offer me your head in comfort. I used to do that too, you know..." Her words were low and she did not expect anybody to hear, much less respond.

[Taylani]

Moving through the tents, more or less simply moving for the sake of moving and not being hunched over one piece of jewelry or another as she struggled to self-teach the craft, Taylani was careful to make sure she stayed well within the tent line. However much she might have desired to run out to the horizon, over the line of grasses that lead directly into the sea of grass, she had seen the kind of creatures that infants of beasts could be.. Strangely it was that encounter, one that might have driven other captives to hopeless despair, that causes Taylani to try harder to not assimilate for she has no intentions of staying in this place, but to accept the culture and the people.

Perhaps it was the knowledge that she truly was without recourse, but while she is not warm she is neither cold nor distant either. Nor is she rude and obstinate, so when she moved across the tent grounds and entered into a paddocked area she slows and inspects her surrounding. This was not a place she had come before, nor a place where Fallan had taken her, the animals were odd and slightly strange to Taylani's eyes but it was the woman there who caused her brow to raise. She didn't hear much of what she spoke, only the words comfort and sweet, the rest were lost to the sounds of the animals.

The dancer hesitates, unsure if she should speak or if she should just follow her natural instinct and move off. There was nothing she could do for this woman, nothing that this woman could do for her...yet the sorrow that the other seems to exude struck her, and she wonders what it might have been like if she had had a simple word from someone who understood. From here Taylani could see no windmarks, and from the woman's demeanor and other clues, she deduces only that the other was probably not Drykas. At least, not yet.

Finally Taylani decides to speak, her voice not soft nor pitying, nor is it coddling and warm. Instead it is quiet, but understanding. "Comfort can be a rare thing out here." Her words were common speech, her body moving to stand not close to the other but nearer.

[Isedan Autumnrun]

Her hands continued to move across the brow of the young dog, her smile nearly non-existent as she looked to it. Her heart ached for escape from this wretched world, go back to Him, find Him, see to a proper disposal and not let some beast scamper off with his remains, leaving the rest to rot. But when a voice called to her from nearby, not to another but truly to her, the woman's gentle stroke ceased, her fingers tracing to the side of the dogs head so that it could lick at her offered palm.

There was not condescension or reviling in the voice, it simply was calm and compassionate. Issy turned her head towards it to see who might address her so when many of those in this odd place were on one extreme or the other. The woman looked young, but then so did Issy, her brows knitting and eyes full of woe. Licking her lips, the woman spoke faintly in return. "For a place so full of color, I certainly feel no cheer in it." Her throat cleared, the dog still licking happily away until her palm was sticky with its saliva. "You look...familiar."

Most of the faces during the reassimilation process did not stick in the kelvic's mind, her whole being having simply given up for those first fifty days. But she wondered if this one might not have been among the auctioned off. "Were you...?" the question remained open ended, an answer not expected, but welcomed if it was given. Straightening now and wiping her slobbered hand on the side of her slacks, she turned her eyes back to the dog, thinking it might make a good addition, but not for Cotice's hunting...She wanted it for herself. Maybe it could lift her spirits where that fool of a man could not.

Her right hand floated across her waist to hold her forearm in distant thought, wild eyes searching for more where there was none. They teared again and she did not force them away. "When, if I may ask?" Perhaps talking to this one would help, was beyond her own years and could not understand what Issy suffered. None of them could.

[Taylani]

Taylani knows well the numbness that pervades when one has accepted that one has no choice in the matter of life or death. She remembers well the pain that spiked through that numbness when it finally broke, and remembers well laying with her face buried in the dirt within the tent waiting on Fallan's return the first night of the auction, the release of grief and terror in a flood of tears and heartache. Yet looking back she knows now that had to happen, to help temper her shell, to help protect herself as she must for the next..so many seasons.

As the other returns an answer, Taylani nods almost to herself the words the other speaks cementing her decision to reach out to the woman next to her. Sinking slowly, gracefully down to the ground, her legs folding beneath her and her hands automatically arranging the plain almost drab in comparison to the Drykas' garb skirts around herself.

Blue eyes watch the other, watched how she touched the animal, noticed even how her hand drifts across her midsection before she speaks, still in the quiet trying to affect an unobtrusive tone. "A while. Around 77, 78 of summer." A soft smile, almost apologetic was given, "It has been so long...I can't remember the exact date. I was among the first ...sold." The last word is given with a twisting of her lips, a look that screams distaste and bitterness before her features smooth again, with visible effort. "You?" She asks, though she spent much of her time in the acclimation camps in a tizzy, after the first club of her head, and then her scene she had made in the medical tent she did not really pay much attention to the other captives. That had been her numb stage, before the reality had set in, when all she did was put one foot in front of the other.

The irony of the fact that the man who bought her like cattle, was also most likely the one that is responsible for the fact that she is not still near explosion with bitterness and rage. The hope he had dangled in front of her like a carrot on a string giving her reason enough to play along. She actively refuses to think of his actions since, the kindnesses he had deliberately shown her, sometimes overwhelmed by the utter maleness in his need for control. With a shake of her head, Taylani brings herself back to the moment, her face flushing for a minute as she realized she had started off in her own mind. "I... didn't stay for the rest of the ..the auction. Preoccupied with a situation I suppose you could say. I assume you were there as well then?"

[Isedan Autumnrun]

A slight nod and a cast down of her eyes as she heard the other out, replying faintly, "Sixtieth." Then her voice dropped in volume, barely a whisper on the breath that slipped from her lips. "How can I forget that night..." before she raised her eyes to the other again, shifting uncomfortably on her feet.

"Most of what followed is a haze, to tell the truth. It hurts." But she didn't know how to say what. How could they understand? How could any of them? They were just human. "I would much rather flee. Find a hole...or something..." She shrugged a little, decrepit. "At least I needn't see His face on another but know it is not him and it is not his." The woman looked longingly to a crate nearby, then turned back to this one who had approached her for a moment. She stepped away to speak with one of the men keeping watch on the animals and proposed to him the deal with the dog. This whole no-money-for-animals thing was absurd to Issy.

It only took a few chimes and the only thing she had to pay for was a leather collar and leash for the half-trained dog, this slipped on (a noticable shudder crossing the womans features and form as she did this) and then led out to the crates previously observed. The bustle of the tent-city around them went on, some brushing pass the two captives, few giving them even a glance as they moved. Too much to do, too much to see. Busy busy busy bees.

With the happy pup now sitting with its head in her lap, tongue occasionally licking at the hand she offered before its nose. "Good dog." She murmured. At last, the woman looked again to Tay, that same wan, depressed smile shown. "I didn't even see who bought me. Some man in green...hmph, petch if I know for sure. Too many colors here. Ninety days since they killed him." The woman lowered her head, her forehead against the dogs and gave a low chuffing sound to it that was not unfriendly. "I do not understand why they did that...we were off the main road and it was late....it doesn't matter now, though, he is gone." She peered at the other woman some now, her brow furrowing as she asked, "Is it foul of me to pray for haste in this? Let that foolish man get what he wants so I may leave?"

Assimilation, puh, Issy had done little those weeks in the camp. Force fed cry and sleep. Whatever they said to her, she did not hear, she did not care. "What is your name? You're very kind, you know." Or maybe it was her weakened perception, clinging to the compassion that she was shown.

[Taylani]

The Dancer rarely moves as she sits in the grass, her hands folded gently in her lap. If Fallan, Rue...or really anyone who had met Taylani seen this appearance of calm serenity they might not have believed it. In reality, Taylani is anything but serene, but she guesses that the other would not appreciate the ...obstinate stubbornness that is Taylani. So instead she schools her expressions, exerts tight control over her muscles so that she does not startle or surprise the other who seemed so ...alone. Perhaps it was that loneliness that called to Taylani, for she too was alone in a sea of hostile strangers. Or rather, hostile in her mind.

She waits patiently for the other to return, in truth finding some sort of relief in trying to provide an ounce of comfort to another kept her from focusing on her own troubles. Her head tilts as she watches the woman settle back with her ...dog for lack of a better word for it thought only resembled a dog in reality. She wonders if the other woman realizes that the way she interacted with this animal was much the way a Drykas interacted with their striders, not that Taylani understood that at all either. Yet it was something to put away in her mind for now.

"Him?" Taylani asked, one brow raising in question, her fingers remaining interlaced but just the slightest bit of pressure was being exerted, causing the tips of her fingers to whiten. "I can not claim to know ...everything. Only what..what Fallan has told me and what I have picked up from others. However, " She shrugs, "Most seem to only want breeding women. If they..they killed someone close to you, I am so sorry. I know that there is another..a brother and sister caught in the raid. They gave the brother a choice to leave peacefully or come with his sister. He knew he couldn't fight them so he chose.." She stops, and waves her hand between the two of them, "This. Perhaps whoever he was..he fought them?" She felt her own eyes blur from sympathy but she did not allow the tears to fall, she had become adept at withholding them.

"It is not a foul thing. I .." She stops, but she lifts her chin and let the blush take over her cheeks, shame flitting quickly across her features before she recomposes them to the careful blank mask. "I have made a bargain with the man who bought me. Two children. Healthy, and weaned. And he will take me back to Syliras. I too am looking for haste, and do what I must. No matter how shameful and unfair it is, I won't let them have the rest of my life what there is left of it."

Taylani finally raises her hands, and scrubs her face with her palms, more to dispel the air of despair and bitterness, the haze of anger that threatened to rise. When she returns her gaze to the other, it is once more calm though her eyes are hard and flat though her lips upturned into a very small smile takes some of the edge from her features. "I am not kind. I am simply ..human. I am called Taylani. I was a Dancer from Syliras. I am not Drykas, nor will I ever be Drykas." The last she says as almost a challenge, a declaration.

[Isedan Autumnrun]

The woman's eyes shone with sympathy for the other now and the deal she had made with the one who had taken her too, reaching out to clasp the top of one of her hands in her own for a moment, squeezing in understanding, and then withdrawing. And then in pantomime of the many iterations that ran the tents to those like Taylani and Isedan, she said, "Oh it is not breeding, dear, it is repopulating. Well what thoughts had they of us when they stole us in the night, picking off the slower children, pushing or killing those who tried to protect."

It was Issy's turn for anger to swell, the painted dog's head creeping off her lap this time. "They spared no thought for Lukyc when they shot him in the back." Her voice had raised in volume, furious eyes looking past Tay to the men and women that moved around them. "You heard me. Perhaps the gods cast a Pox on you lot for a reason, had you thought of that?! And now you take us and use us believing we will succumb to your nation like it was our own, breeding and whispering into our ears that it was necessary! Sssss!" She bared her teeth and hissed at a lad of twelve or so who was leading a young filly off somewhere. He jumped in surprise, sparing a glance at the one who had actually hissed at him and then hurried off.

Sniffling some, the woman wiped her nose and looked down into her lap again, a few tears running down her cheeks. "I'm sorry." She murmured. "I am just tired and ill of it all and I can't...I can't break from this hollowness that consumes me." She took a breath and sneaked a peek at the other when her introduction finally came.

"Taylani? That's a pretty name. I am Isedan; I am from Syliras, too. My mate and I were hunters of the woods between the borders, Zeltiva, and Syliras." When the other made it clear that she was simply human and definitely not Drykas, Issy smiled more naturally this time. It made her seem less lost. "I am certainly not Drykas either. Where at did you dance, Taylani? The Casket? The Stallion? We never had much time for the city, I'm afraid, Lukyc and I; we tended to sell our haul and leave for the next load."

[Taylani]

"No matter the nice names they give it, all it is is breeding." Taylani responds matter of factly, accepting the other woman's touch with a surprised look, but she did not pull away. It was also with more empathy that Taylani felt her own anger rise to match Isedan's, finally someone who understood her anger! Someone who understood her bitterness! The other captives she had talked with seemed..resigned to their fate. Everyone seemed to suffer from the insanity that kidnapping and forcing women into their camp was ok because the ends justified the means.

Moving closer to the other now, Taylani does not try and put an arm around her, but she does offer her leg a soft pat if she allowed it, marveling just a little at the animalistic hiss the woman had given but understanding the sentiment. "I did not dance at those places, I..I don't even think I have ever been in them. Though I suppose when I go back, that option will be what is left for me. No, I was training to be a performance artist. I had planned on entertaining at theaters, I heard once that Riverfall has an amphitheater...but that is not feasible now."

The length of red hair that adorns Taylani's head falls forward when she hunches over, her elbows bracing on her knees. Inwardly she cringes, already hearing her dance instructor remarking on her poor posture. "A hunter with your Mate? Then you were ...married?"

[Isedan Autumnrun]

Issy ah'd softly in understanding, looking sideways at the other as she listened. Some of the awfulness of it all seemed lifted (just a bit) while she was in the company of Taylani, comforted by this one even if the other did not understand really why she felt the way she did. When the mention of Riverfall came, the woman shook her head in bewilderment, having not seen a map of more than the very northern edges of Cyphrus where Lukyc and she had often hunted together.

"Riverfall...?" She paused, thinking. "Oh, that place at the south end of the Kabrin. I've heard only heresay of it, to tell the truth. Even as a child, life was about work and honor. I suppose it was our proximity to Syliras, but at least we had the Knights protection." The woman shrugged again then winced, straightening and pressing a hand to her belly, the dog looking up from where it had laid at their feets, his tail thumping hard against the ground a few times.

"Nmm, no, we were not married, though the subject had risen many a times around the fires and in the tent." It was a fond memory to sit with him, feel the tug of her very essence ebb and flow with his. "Still, we were much closer than many a married couple. There were times when I..." She trailed off, a hand reaching out in search of something now gone. "...Nevermind." Her eyes flicked to the woman beside her and the reassuring pat to her knee. It was a curious gesture of humanity, one that even Issy partook in.

The dog had begun chewing on one of the boots she wore, one of the few replacements they had given her after the capturing. It should have been reflex to hiss at the dog to discourage it from her shoe but thoughts of Lukyc had sobered her again and Issy found herself wanting to curl up and wail again. Gods this was horrible and here was this pretty young lady being so nice and sharing in her misery.

Gods, I just want my heart back...

She thought weakly, her stomach churning unhappily from all of the activity and her belly tense with stress. "Mnf, I'm sorry, I'm not...I'm not terribly interesting at this time." Depressing she wanted to say but that was, in itself, depressing...

[Taylani]

Idly Taylani leans forward, her arm reaching out to shoo the dog from the other woman's boot, not unkindly but firmly. Instinctively Taylani understands the other woman's waves of sorrow. She remembered well the way emotions had rolled from high to low when she was first forced into this life, and she had not had to contend with a death of a loved one. Only the death of her former life.

"I have never been to Riverfall, but it is something my Dance instructor spoke on, quite a bit." She speaks softly, once more gentling her voice to sooth as best that she could. Taylani reflects that it is odd, she sat down only to issue a bit of comfort from a non-Drykas woman to another captive something she was never afforded in the early days of her captivity. Yet now she was finding she was feeling a large amount of empathy for this other.

"Here..." She says, lifting her arm, offering her shoulder now for the other woman to accept or not. She does not try and force the other to accept her offer of closeness, she does not wish to frighten her or spook her. "If I wanted interesting I would take off outside of the city again. Later remind me to tell you an 'interesting' story about a baby lion..I have had my fill of interesting. It isn't healthy to hold everything back, sometimes a good heavy cry ...well it purges the soul." Once more she flashes back to her first night in Fallan's tent, crumpled on the dirt shuddering uncontrollably with the force of her tears.