Completed A Moment's Peace

[Tani]

514AV, 4th Day of Spring.

The grass resisted her passage, strands grasping at the fur of her coat. Even with the slope of the earth aiding her, the descent felt so much longer to the Kelvic then any she could recall. Which, she conceded, was not a great many. Her memories were slippery things as of late, mental butterflies dancing just out of reach. Fragments came and went, unbidden, but cohesive memory? Structure? Those things were thoroughly lost to her. She knew deeper memories were there, but couldn't fathom what they were supposed to mean. Not right now. They were too distant and recalling them was simply too much effort.

The moisture hanging in the air was real enough, though - she could taste it, the water-chilled breeze sending waves rippling across the surrounding grassland. The wound on her foreleg still stung something fierce, but the pain settled to a dull ache as the ground leveled out before her, the height of the grass slowly decreasing as she edged forward.

Her journey had been the product of over a week's worth of slowly worsening dehydration. The few rabbits she had been able to track for more then a handful of bells had consistently failed to lead her to anything resembling a reliable water source, and the few pools that the rains had bought were hardly enough to survive on; even for a predator of her caliber. This, though. This was different. She could feel the water in the air. Still, she had survived, and she couldn't help but feel a measure of pride at that.

She was still countless miles from where she was meant to be, of course. Not lost, exactly. She never got lost. Everything else was just out of order. The camp the Drykas raiders had departed from two seasons ago was somewhere sunward, and her track had carried her in that vague direction for the past... However long it was she had been walking for. A long while. Tani wasn't overtly concerned. It would only be a matter of time before she found it.

A trio of faint green birds spiraled into the sky at her approach, frustrated calls shrieking their inconvenience. Tani paid them no heed, and pushed through the last of the grass confining her with a final shove. The Kelvic stumbled a few steps forward with a distinctly un-feline lack of grace, narrowly avoiding a patch of startlingly clear water at her paws, caught a glimpse of her reflection and nearly leaped back into the grass.

The battered creature that stared back at her bore little resemblance to the well-groomed kelvic that had departed the tents of the horse lords. Black fur hung in mangled clumps, dotted with the collected dirt and dust of weeks worth of wandering. A long scratch, clotted over, inched its way down her left forelimb - she'd seen the wound before, but seeing her reflection in its entirety was unsettling. She wasn't meant to look like this. Mangy and rotten, the reflection could have belonged to a stranger - one of the feral cats that had occasionally roamed the camp. Only her eyes were the same, twin patches of green squinting out beneath battered fur. Her ears twisted back in the feline equivalent of a scowl as she batted the image away, finally sinking to drink from the lake.

[Tani]

Water stretched before her like glass, tiny fish darting above the lake-bed that fringed the shallows. The bank quickly sank away toward the lake's centre, vanishing into a deep blue void that whispered of lurking eyes and waiting teeth. The sky was clear, a few stringy clouds stretching above her, an imperfect mirror of the lake below. Perhaps it was beautiful, but for now all she cared was that it was a water source. Tani shifted form as she stepped into the water, eyes darting between the opposite bank and the sky above, scanning for predators. The lake was lower then the surrounding area, and the declining grass around the water made it a perfect place to track prey, just as she had - that she had to come here thirsty and exhausted would only make the situation more attractive to anything lurking in the grass. A reminder, though she hardly needed another, of just how vulnerable she was beneath the open sky.

A stunted tree hung precariously over the lake a short distance from her and Tani slipped beneath its cover gratefully. New leaves were sprouting from the trunk even as the upper branches slowly tottered further over the water, a column of tiny insects parading up and down its length. Tani pointedly left them alone - she was riddled with more than enough stings already. In human form the wound on her arm was more noticeable - though no less dirt encrusted; a pair of jagged puncture wounds stretching from elbow to wrist, an angry red welt surrounding the holes like a pavilion’s outriggers. A few smaller wounds dotted the area in between the larger bites, probably where the fox's teeth had grazed her. She poked the welt and was rewarded for the effort with a pulse of pain that made her wince. It hurt. Surely it hadn't been that bad last night. It was probably just the water. She tugged the aching arm to her chest, and scrubbed the dirt from the rest of her body as best she could.

Beneath the dirt her body was a mess of scratches and bruises. The worst was the wound on her arm, but there were no shortage of stuttering protests from the various nicks as she ran her hand over them. She glanced at the back of her right hand. It was bare, as usual. Kyron had chosen to carry his windmarks there, a small twisting pattern that she could still see in her mind eye's if she focused hard enough. Where he had had the tattoos applied was a mystery to her. It was, she thought, before they'd met, though it was difficult to recall. She had never had more then a passing interest in the marks, at least not one she had learnt what earning them entailed. Horses were still something of an enigma to her. They were neither prey nor predator, strange plant-eaters that carried other predators on their backs. It all seemed like an awful lot of trouble to go to for a hunt, in Tani's opinion, particularly as the animals did not seem to be in the least inclined towards co-operation as far as she was concerned. No, strange little creatures, she concluded. Far better to hunt on foot. Satisfied with the conclusion, she returned her attention to a particularly stubborn speck of dirt wedged beneath a fingernail.

The sun had inched to the horizon by the time she pulled herself from the lake's shallows, brushing water from her bare arms. Finally devoid of the sweat and grime of who-knew-how-long's wandering in the grassland, she felt smooth again. Sleek. She slipped back into feline form with a sense of profound relief. Hands were useful for cleaning, but she loathed the sense of vulnerability that came with bare skin and soft, dull teeth. Humans were herd animals, and she had no herd out here. It was a mystery to her how the people of the grasslands had not fallen to predators long ago. Cool water pooled around her paws as Tani stalked her way along the lakeside, the screeching of insects filling the twilight air.

There was still an uncomfortable ache in the pit of her stomach, but at least the creeping dryness of the last few days had been evicted from her mouth. The thickening grass swayed ahead of her, and she stepped into its embrace willingly. Open ground, like that surrounding the lake, made her feel far too much like prey. The grass though, the grass was hers. It had been for as long as she remembered. No less dangerous for it, but hers nonetheless. It was a realm of certainty, a place where the world beneath her feet made sense, so unlike the world of men. The forest of shifting strands welcomed her like an old friend, and the blue of the lake quickly vanished in a crosspatch of twirling blades. A little piece of her confidence returned with each step she took in the darkening grass, still sharp to her feline vision, as she set off in the direction of the rising moon. It wasn't any particular course, but following the glow simply felt right. Kyron was still out there somewhere, after all.

[Khida]

Grade Hold

You need to update your ledger with expenses for Spring 514 before I can release your grade.