Little Victories

[Cassandra Southwind]

Winter 44, 513 The Amaranthine River It had been three days since their victory at the Tranquil Port. The whole Southwind Pod had been down in the weirs, alongside the Lhavitian fishermen which they had only just begun to tolerate. The haul had been a good and proper one, truly blessed by the gods. It would feed the city through the coldest weeks of the year, preventing much sickness and hardship for locals and (now honored) guests alike. It would also become the olive branch moment in which the two xenophobic groups put aside their differences, for it had been followed by a good and proper celebration. A celebration which, rightly well, had not yet ended. One of the last to acclimate to their hosts' strange sleeping patterns, Cassandra had woken late from dawn rest. She was aboard her casinor, The Lioness, because the camp's festivities did not share her enthusiasm for sleep. One look at the shore and she had decided that she had had enough; instead of swimming toward the still-burning bonfire, she had hoisted anchor and set sail for the brackish river mouth. By mid-morning she was knee deep in Makutsi's fresh water artery, just out of sight of the bay. Though the Amaranthine itself was new to her, it felt like a cousin she had only yet to meet. It wound around the sailor's feet and babbled in her ear, the same as any other, opening wholly and lovingly to her patient scrutiny. She leaned over it, hands in a special formation just beneath its swarming surface, legs moving slowly upstream but never against the flow. She found its rhythm and in it, its heart. Only then was she able to attempt the lesson her mother had taught her. The Oceanus mark on her hand thrashed in a silent prayer. A piece of her reached from her fingers and out into the water like an invisible thread which waved, beckoned, and disappeared again. Soon, the river began to beat with migrating fish, big pink salmon that leapt like dolphins from the shallows. Cassandra never focused on one for too long, letting all the wrong ones slip by until one wandered into her grasp. She closed on it, then in the same movement lifted it by the tail and struck it dead against a riverside rock. She'd done it. She'd never realized how much easier it would be inland, how much cleaner. The shock of her success made her gasp and the pride of it pulled a happy cry from her. "Yes!" But just as she said it, a loud rustling sounded from behind the evergreens. Cassandra quickly quieted and crouched. The surviving fish dispersed as she looked carefully around for the source of the noise. She did not look long. When she found nothing, she turned back to her trophy. It took the rest of her willpower not to celebrate further, instead bowing her head to recite a quick prayer of thanks before she stepped out of the river. Still behind the rock on which her prey had given its life, she sat and with her knife began to prepare the morning's breakfast.

[Chakahn]

Forty-four days into winter and the chill in the air was growing insistent. The sun was two bells away from reaching its highest peak at noon where both it and the inhabitants of Lhavit would take a break, the first half of the day already behind them. It was one of the traits of the region that Chakahn had trouble adjusting to. Back in Cyphrus every chime of the day was hard worked and rests were taken when necessary, not at set times. He didn't mind - it lent him a much-needed advantage in many ways. Most people retreated quietly inside their homes, clearing the landscape and giving him a moment fully alone. Nine out of ten times, he would hurriedly assemble his gear and traipse down the Diamond Road on foot, making just the one detour on the way.

Pursing his lips, he let a breath of air soar through the rounded opening. The pure sound resonated perfectly, gliding its way smoothly through the harsh mist. A pair of furry white ears pricked eagerly at the sound of the low whistle, answering the call with a high-pitched, excitable greeting. The less pure sound of a hoof banging impatiently against a stall door rose from inside the stable, and Kahn chuckled. He nodded a greeting to the grubby stable boy, who was sullenly piloting an equally grubby wheelbarrow. The smell made Kahn wrinkle his nose, and he let out his breath as he approached his trusty friend.
"If I had to live with that stench, I'd seek greener pastures," he informed the horse, his tone quasi-reproachful, as if inquiring why Sanshae hadn't just unlocked the door and sauntered off. He flung open the wooden gate, receiving a teasing headbutt on the way in. He swept away the forelock, scratching the exposed spot affectionately. "No, actually, don't you go getting ideas." Although he'd selected Sanshae as a replacement for Karal on the way to Lhavit they had bonded soundly and at times, he could swear that the young Frostmarch stallion understood the flowing words of the Pavi tongue just as well as any Cyphrus Strider.
Another headbutt smacked into his chest and he grunted, slightly winded. "Patience, Sans, we'll be off soon."

Soon they were up and running, a fair distance already between them and the Road. With his throwing arm, he gripped his newly acquired shortspear firmly, his other hand resting on Sans's crest. A shiver rippled through Kahn's body as they picked up speed, raising the hairs on his arm and creating neat rows of goosebumps from the heightened wind. Although the coldest season of the year was already reaching the halfway mark, he still refused to cover his torso with anything more than a sleevless shirt. As comfortingly warm as his jacket and cloak may be, they were a curse on any hunting trip. The fabrics rubbed together on every beat of Sanshae's stride at any pace faster than a walk, and it was enough to alert any of his targets to his presence.

As they approached the Amarinthine River, Kahn checked Sanshae's pace, cocking an eyebrow at the hard breaths the horse was taking. He really did need more frequent exercise; Sans was getting out of shape. They slowed to a halt at the periphery of evergreen trees, staying shielded in the forest area of the Misty Peaks. Spear in hand, he peered over the line, letting his gaze glide across the surface of the water. He shifted his weight to lean forward in the saddle, hunching his shoulders into a crouching position. Hunting was a waiting game and at a broad body of water in a place like this, a herd or a single individual would sooner or later advance to the waterfront to rehydrate their systems.

Movement caught his attention in the corner of his eye and his spirits soared, the prospect of making a kill this soon in the game filling him with confidence. The tip of a shadow poked out from behind a rock, undistinguishable to the untrained eye. Admittedly, he couldn't yet tell what creature it was, but as of now it was one that had a limited span of heartbeats left. A cocky grin stretched over Kahn's face, and he raised his spear arm, poised to take the shot.

~

[Cassandra Southwind]

Cassandra's knife sliced cleanly through its neck, beneath its scales, into its belly. Preparing the fish was a quick process, and a quiet one; perhaps there was no need to stay silent or hidden, except for that pesky thing called habit. In a matter of short minutes, the blood was washing back into the river, the living essence returned to the life-giver. Normally she would cook the innards into a stew, but most of her supplies were back at the boat and she didn't have the energy for a fire. She resolved to bury the excess pieces in the soil beneath the trees. Only then could she enjoy her meal properly. Wiping the blade on her belt, she stood to stretch. Before she could properly sheath it, however, she spied a pair of shapes behind her accidental hiding place--she gasped audibly when she saw the spearhead pointed in her direction, ducking behind the boulder in the next instant. A slew of Fratava curses fell from her startled mouth, most involving tasteless remarks about divine genitalia. Pieces of fish and viscera were splayed amid the gravel around her, kicked by her scrambling feet. She did her best not to worry about them for now, to keep herself concentrated on matters of mortality. After a moment's consideration, she reached a single hand out from behind the boulder. But then she remembered that her hand was still covered in blood, and she pulled it back. Probably not a good way to get a hunter off her hide. "Don't shoot!" She cried instead. Her Common was rough, but surely understandable. "I am a person!" From the glimpse she'd got of her predator, she had concluded that the fact of her humanity would dissuade him. Hopefully she was right. In case she wasn't, she offered an alternative. "You... you want fish?"

[Chakahn]

The shadow shifted, revealing more than just the tip. Sanshae was alert and tense under him, alerted by his own anticipating stance. Kahn's thoughts wandered to his next prey, already debating the location of his second hunting spot.
A sharp intake of breath from across the river snapped his attention back to the hunt. A glimpse of his target surfaced from behind the rock, just for a second. It was still too short to get a clear view, and Kahn frowned in irritation at his own lack of action. His brown eyes darkened and he loosened his grip on the spear, allowing the upcoming wrist movement some flexibility. Reprimanding himself harshly for his own inattentiveness, the resolve to pounce on his next chance settled in him. His arm eased back silently to build up enough force for the shot.

A new flicker of movement jolted briefly out from behind the boulder. Almost in reflex Kahn thrust his arm forward, spreading his fingers out to open his hand as the spear reached the correct point high above his shoulder. Doubt made him freeze after the release. His brain caught up with his instinct a fraction of a second later, recognising the target for what it was but it was too late. The weapon was already sailing through the air.
An accented voice rose from behind the rock. "Don't shoot! I'm a person!" Kahn himself was too startled even to swear, he was rooted to his crouching spot on Sanshae's back. His eyes were glued to the movement of the spear, plain shock written all over his face. He felt like it was moving in slow motion, especially so his guilty conscience could react to its fullest.

A gush of air tumbled out of his mouth and he finally breathed out, wiping the sweat from his forehead. The clunk of the iron head slamming into the hard stone surface made him giddy with relief and he laughed out loud at his luck. In his nineteen years, he had never been so glad to have missed his target. Fate, some would call it.

The female voice reached his ears again, offering him fish. He stared disbelievingly at his invisible former target, wondering why she was offering him fish. He slid off Sanshae's back ungracefully, his cramped muscles enjoying the shift of position. With his hand on the hilt of his sword he circled around the boulder, coming face to face with the girl for the first time.
"Fish?" he repeated, his voice strained. His eyes met her blue ones, embarrassment clouding over the dark colour. "Why the blazes were you hiding behind a rock? You realise I almost put a hole through your hand?" Relief and guilt made him defensive, defending any fault on his part by attacking hers. Not knowing where to look, he finally rested his gaze on the limp fish in her bloodsoaked hand.

~

[Cassandra Southwind]

As if in response to Cassandra's absurd cries, the spear she had glimpsed came crashing onto the boulder beside her. Her already roiling thoughts were shattered and scattered by the noise of it; between the sudden near-death and the ringing in her ears, the girl sank against the other side of the rock, clutching her heart and nearing shock. She didn't even think to start when he rounded on her, favoring instead to stare at the indiscernible distance and try not to hyperventilate. The sound of a distinctly human voice found her ears, which eventually pulled her eyes up on the man, or rather the giant blonde mane and the shadow beneath it. He spoke like almost dying had been her idea, like he and his spear were only bystanding victims. Cassandra scoffed. "Vayt's rotting cock," she said in Common; she'd learned the curse from a Zeltivan sailor and it was one of her favorites. "I'm not hiding nowhere. I was only sitting, minding my own, when you attacked me." Rolling her eyes, Cassandra stumbled and stood. She looked over the rock, at the horse. That explained the smell. "What a hunter you are," she added, bending again to retrieve the good parts of her cleaned and gutted fish. "Can't even tell a person from an animal." She made a display of letting her guard down, bluffing like she didn't fear the sword at his side. Really her every sense was alerted, even as her eye fell on the raw flesh in her hand. It was covered in riverside grime. Her terrorized lungs ached for more air than her steadied breathing would allow, but she dared not show him more weakness than she already had. If only to mask the tension in her face, she turned from him. Then she leaned over the river and washed the fish properly. Her gut told her that he was sorry, even though he hadn't said so. She didn't need an apology as much as she needed her heart to stop beating so fast. "So, you want some fish or what?"

[Chakahn]

Kahn's guilty defensiveness turned to actual annoyance at the snarky comment. But then, he reflected, unlike himself she actually had a right to be defensive; after all he had very nearly torn apart her fingers. As unreasonable as it was, he struggled to put his anger aside. He nodded curtly at her renewed offer, eyeing the fish apprehensively. "Sure." The stench of it rose to his throat, polluting the air in his lungs. He wasn't particularly fond of fish, but he might do well to try and thaw the tension between them.

Vayt's rotting cock? he thought, the corners of his mouth curving reluctantly upwards. As swear words went, that one brought unpleasant but vivid images to his imagination. "I'm Chakahn," he said to her turned back. "But most people call me Kahn. I prefer Kahn." Memories of his siblings sprang to mind, in particular the ones where they would spend the day pestering each other, thinking of new games to win. He remembered when he was eight, and he'd taunted his brother Hestodi, calling him Fishtoedi for three days. His brother had retaliated comfortably by calling him Chicken for three years. Since then, he usually went by Kahn.

He sighed, clearing his throat awkwardly. "Look, I am sorry about the spear. It was a reflex." Her words about not being able to tell an animal from a person brushed him up the wrong way and he fought to keep it civil.
"But really, poking a body part out from behind your hiding place - or sitting place, or your minding-your-own-business-place, if you must insist - was not a smart move," he couldn't resist adding.
It was his turn to turn from her, to obscure his frowning expression. He scanned the canopy of trees, spotting the graceful white figure with ease. While his lips were still clean of any fish grease, he brought them together and let out a low Pavi call, inviting Sanshae to come closer.

~

[Cassandra Southwind]

The river's constant flow was at once personal and eternal, a soft mother's touch on Cassandra's tense hands. Nagging anxieties pinched on the edges of her mind like itchy little barnacles, but she played it cool. Her eyes fell down to his sword only the one time and her mind wandered to her own knife only twice. It was an accident. It was over. And the waters ran casually over the raw flesh she held, removing superficial faults and leaving the shiny pink piece beneath. She did not speak again until she had finished the task. Her hanging mouth was primed to make the apology mutual--more a matter of civility than sincerity--but it stopped short in the wake of Kahn's hasty tongue. He chided her and then he turned from her, leaving her to step out of the stream in private. A spot of curiosity colored her usual frown. The absence of his face, its exasperations and its wary ramparts, was as comforting as it was telling. Could he have been as startled as she? Doubtful, considering that he had not been the one to nearly die. But she decided that she could spare him a length of sympathy, if not forgiveness. "Cassandra," she replied, as his strange call faded from the air and his horse's hooves noised toward them. "Or Cass. I don't prefer one or the other." If Kahn did not turn back to face her, she would take the initiative to round him and catch his eye. She tore the salmon in half where he could see, though it caught at the base of the spine and made them rip uneven. She held the bigger piece out to him like a white flag. "If you want it cooked, you have to make your own fire." Cassandra may have begun to recognize in her heart that some of the fault was hers, but she wasn't about to admit that to this stranger. She looked up her brow at him, the way her lia did when she was tired of being patient, but a second look at her stubborn gaze and hip-hooked fingers might have shown him that she was no threat. When her attention fell down to the fish in her hand, her expression softened. She ripped a tender shred from the filet and thumbed it between her teeth. "You don't hunt here often, do you?" She teased, and the Common language fell thick on her untrained tongue. The insinuation that she knew the area better than he was probably false, since she had only been around for half a season and had never yet ventured into this particular valley. But he didn't have to know that. "Mountains are no place for a horse. You are not from here."

[Chakahn]

As he waited, his eyes fixed on the white stallion, she joined in the round of introductions. He nodded, showing without speaking that he had heard. Although he had been on the road for months on end and spoken little other than the common tongue, the sole use of communicating through words sometimes perplexed him. The Pavi language was a combination of both gestures and words, and he wondered how others managed to express themselves sufficiently without softening or amplifying the vocal sounds with a sign.

Sans caught up with them just as Cassandra stripped the fish in two, exposing the soft pink colour inside. He took the chunk from her outstretched palm, unobtrusively holding it out from his body to reduce the smell. "Thank you." He broke off a corner of the salmon, mirroring her movement. Instead of raising it to his mouth, he held it out to Sans, who sniffed it suspiciously before shooting him what might have been a dithering look. Kahn stifled a grin at that, noting that even this horse with his bottomless stomach would rather not go near it. To keep on her good side, however, he tore another small piece and slid it into his mouth, keeping his expression carefully even.

"I arrived here halfway through Fall," he said as the last of the bite slid through his throat. "It isn't the perfect landscape for a horse, no, but Sans is a lot more used to it than I am." He eyed her as he chewed, letting the characteristic traits of different races run through his mind and comparing her to them. Her skin was substantially tinted by the sun and her eyes shone a clear blue, but that went for a lot of the population of varied heritage. Her fishing skills, however, tempted him to think in the direction of the Svefra. From all the stories he had heard as a child, the fierce seafarers were not a people to be trifled with. He shrugged it off. Innocent until proven guity, he mused.

A wry smile crossed his lips as thoughts of the Suvan Sea sprang immediately to mind. He missed home - he missed being amongst his own family, people of his own culture and the familiar migratory route of the Run. His money was running thin under the expense of the Solar Winds' rent and the living expense since he had left home. He didn't know what was going to cripple his financial situation more - making the long journey around the sea through Kalea and Taldera, then crossing the border into Sylira and finally arriving in Cyphrus or paying the traders' price, who generally asked more than three times the gold.
"Since you immediately noticed I'm not from around here, are you?" He leaned back comfortably against Sanshae's shoulder as he spoke, still nibbling tentatively at the fish. "From here, I mean. Do you hunt?"

~

[Cassandra Southwind]

Cassandra looked sideways at the horse when he mentioned it, an idle look of disgust on her face lingering from the creature's refusal of her fish. (Anyone would didn't partake in Laviku's bounty was untrustworthy, in Cassandra's book. Her latest acquaintance seemed to have passed that unspoken test.) Another chunk of salmon slipped into her mouth as her staring eyes wandered over Kahn's companion. It had been a long while since she had seen any hooved creature besides an okomo. The horse looked strong and swift despite the odd, alien shape of its eyes. Had she been wrong to assume that its kind were also adept climbers? She hated mistaken assumptions, especially her own. Turning back to the human, she caught him in his brief scrutiny. It seemed he was sizing her up, or at least determining what sort of stranger she was. She had been right about his being foreign, but not about his experience with the area; he had half a season on her and he probably knew it. For all of her accusations, Cassandra could not recognize any telling signs of his heritage or race. "No," she answered, then realized that might have been too terse. "Not really. Land meat is too…" For a moment, she forgot the word in Common. She took another bite as she tried to remember it. "Chewy." Common was tricky, with all of its dialects and variations on words. At least she had never heard of Pavi; she would not have liked the horseman's language even if she knew it. Cassandra liked to consider herself a stone wall, smooth and stark and without nuance. Even if she had a feeling about a particular thing, she would never have the intention to show it. Undertones were for the weak-minded and the socially inclined. She was neither, and she was proud to be a closed book to anyone she crossed. She didn't know that she wasn't very good at it. Savoring her long awaited breakfast, she glanced down the valley at the distant shore. She did not think the silence to be awkward until after the moment had passed. "Oh, and no, I am not from around here, either. We came by boat at the beginning of Winter. No hunting on the water." She licked a bit of flavor from her thumb as her attention wandered back to Kahn. "Unless you--oh, I hunt fish. Or… I fish, yes. How do the cityfolk say it? I catch fish." Her struggle was becoming embarrassing. She tried to recover. "Do you?"

[Catastrophe]

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Cassandra :

Skills

• Fishing: 2 XP
• Socialization: 3 XP
• Observation: 2 XP

Lores

• Fishing: Bear Handed Technique
• Using a Gnosis Mark to Catch Fish
• Kahn: A Stranger who doesn’t like Fish
• Being almost Harmed by a Spear

Loot

• N/A

Chakahn :

Due to lack of activity and update on your ledger, I will be withholding your grade. However, if you do decide to come back and add your expenses for Winter, send me a private message and I'll be happy to give you your grade!

Notes :

Aww... too short of a thread. I would have loved to see this to the end! Either way, I hope you had fun and I'm sorry for Kahn's disappearance. Here's your grade anyway!

If you have any questions or concerns about your grade, don't hesitate to private message me.

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