Closed Feels Just Like Yesterday (Khida, Slither)

[Colt]

1st of Spring, 513 AV
early morning

He didn’t need to be told that the time had arrived. He knew how to count the days, and he didn’t need to see the Watchtowers to know that the season had changed.

Though the jewels had flared to mark the arrival of spring, the last of winter’s chill still bit at him as he pushed aside the flap of his tent and stepped into the gray morning air. It may have been spring, but the season had changed in name alone; the first day of spring was just as chilly as the last day of winter. Still, it was better than the middle of winter—the hunter was observant, if anything, and even a fool could feel the warmer weather. And he could feel the even warmer day it promised, which somewhat lifted the dank spirits that winter had weighed upon him. Though the world was still brittle and silent with the cold slumber of the previous season, he could taste what was to come on the breeze. Soon enough life would spring forth, as it always did, and the grasslands would be bursting with new growth, both beast and plant. And it was a time that the hunter looked forward to.

For now, though, he would resign himself to the last of the cold and to the lean pickings it brought. He had managed thus far, and a little more wouldn’t kill him.

He shrugged deeper into his cloak as he set out away from the camp. Akaidras, who was standing a little ways away with Drelah, noticed and flicked an ear inquiringly, but the hunter waved a hand to signal that the stallion’s assistance was not needed. He had taken to trapping over the season when hunting by hand brought few spoils, and it seemed that winter had been just the time to do so; in winter, the furbearers’ pelts were at their finest. He had set up two traps the day before, and there was little his strider or even the snake and falcon could do with him in this task. Everyone could rest just a little bit longer.

The first snare had been sprung, but whatever had triggered it was nowhere to be found. The hunter frowned in mild irritation, then reset it. The second one had been luckier, and the Drykas was quite surprised to find a black-footed wildcat within. Though it was a bit lean, its fur was thick and lush and would make a fine prize. It hissed and clawed at him when he approached, but the tight loop around its neck made its end a simple enough affair. The hunter sent a quick thanks to Caiyha, then reset the trap.

The tip of the sun had breached the eastern horizon when he returned to the two tents that made up his home. He let out a sharp hssss as he passed the one that was not his, informing its inhabitant that the day had officially begun.

Tucking the wildcat under one arm, the hunter crouched by the banked coals in the hearth that sat between the two tents. He unearthed them with care, and the stray wind that was always wafting from somewhere kept them alive enough for him to turn a handful of dry grass into a flickering flame. With kindling it had become a blaze the size of his fist, and with some small branches it was stable. The hunter leaned back, satisfied with his work; the Dhani could do the rest when it was time to make breakfast.

He took a few steps back, then sat down and crossed his legs; he couldn’t expect the newest addition to the group magically summon food from the air—and he was a hunter, after all.

He took extra care when skinning the wildcat; though he was still a novice in the skill, cats’ skins were not very attached to their bodies, and, like rabbits, they were incredibly easy to remove. With a deer, one had to work and wrench and tear the skin away, but with this animal, once he slit it from end to end the hide came off with little fuss. He then removed the claws; he’d never been able to explain why he coveted little trophies, but then again, there was no one around that he needed to explain it to. Claws, teeth, pretty feathers and antlers were all claimed even though he had nothing in particular to do with them.

He set the rest of the wildcat’s carcass on a large hearth-stone for the Dhani to use; though he’d never seen anyone else eat it, the hunter found that most felines bore fine meat and would never turn down a chance at some. Good meat would make a good meal.

He poured some water over his hands to rinse away the blood; it would do no good to have the scent on him when he and the falcon went on their usual morning hunt.

The hunter stood, tilted his head towards the rapidly lightening sky and let loose a ke-ke-ke-ke-ke.

oocAnd some shopping that was done over winter…

2-person tent, 5 gold mizas
bedroll, 1 silver miza
winter blanket, 5 silver mizas
2-gallon cooking pot, 5 silver mizas
soup spoon, 1 copper miza
2 bowls, 6 copper mizas

These items have been given to Slither to look after.

[Khida]

The falcon woke when canvas rustled beneath her, having chosen to roost atop the man's tent the night before. There weren't many higher perches to be had, after all, unless she went to the city -- and even then, it'd just be another tent. No, this suited her just fine, as the deeper chill of winter ebbed with each passing day and a promise of spring began to infuse the air. She watched him go out, cloak wrapped tight about his shoulders, but did not move to follow; he walked with a clear destination in mind, his attention turned more towards earth than sky. Whatever he was doing, her presence wasn't needed. Nor the horse's, from what she saw pass between them -- and that meant he wasn't going far. Satisfied with that, Khida glanced towards the lightening sky, then chose to spend a few moments checking over her feathers. She had tended them meticulously the evening prior; few needed attention now, which was only as it should be. She shifted her weight on her perch, eyeing the second of their tents, the one the snake-man used. The peregrine didn't hear anything much from within it, and presumed that one wasn't yet stirring. Not really wanting to just sit there until something relevant to her happened, Khida decided to stretch her wings instead -- he would make clear when her presence was needed. The falcon dropped off her perch and flapped up into the lightening sky, spiraling up until she passed out of darkness and into the first rays of morning light. From up high, she watched a line of amber light work its way across the grasslands, turning shades of gray into shades of new-growth green. It painted a long, dark shadow for the man as he returned to the camp, something smallish and dark under his arm. The turn of her soar put camp and human alike behind Khida, leaving her with a view of empty-seeming grasslands stretching off to the horizon. She could see little but a few birds, fast-moving flickers darting in and out of cover, foraging for old seeds or early insects or whatever else they might eat. Little things, but rather tempting, as her stomach reminded the peregrine that the morning meal was termed break-fast for a reason. But then his voice rose into the air, and Khida abandoned that line of musing. Completing her circle, she looked over towards the camp again, finding there a trail of smoke rising into the sky and the man standing beside his little fire, face tilted towards the sky. She let air spill from beneath her wings, descending unhurriedly towards the camp. As the falcon made her way down, the thing on the stone caught her eye -- and her interest. Khida came in to land on the hearth-stone's edge, cocking her head and peering at the carcass, sidling partway around it to consider it from a different angle. Conveniently located dead meat, breakfast...

[Slither]

Time flowed by slowly for Slither, trapped in a half-waking nightmare. Unusually, this one wasn't filled with the rattling of chains, the crack of whips, or the creaking of a rack, memories from the time he'd spent fighting against his masters. Nor was it that black, oppresive silence, devoid of any light, from when he'd been buried alive after a cave-in while he mined. This was subtler, yet just as terrifying. He was back in his nest, Zinrah, finally returned after decades of absence. But nobody welcomed him back. Nobody stopped him to ask his name. The tunnels were empty, lifeless; the city was cold, silent. His heart raced. Had the Myrians finally won this war? Had his people moved without his knowing? He looked around at the bleak buildings, feeling watched. Perhaps the city wasn't as abandoned as he'd thought before? A sharp hissing pierced through his dream, pulling him back to reality. He wasn't in Zinrah, he was in the Sea of Grass. Still someone's belonging, and that someone was now calling him to work. Yet again, Slither wondered about the man's name. If he had one, he'd yet to give it to the Dhani. At first it had been a real surprise. Now, after spending a season with him, Slither had just added it to the list of oddities about this one. Slipping out of his bedroll, the Dhani let out a hiss as he stretched, pushing his arms out and tensing his coils, forming a pulsing knot on the floor before relaxing. The sun was up already judging by the light coming through the tent, and it was another day more. The scent of blood hit him before he saw its source - meat for the breakfast. He'd tasted it before, and though right now he didn't remember what it was exactly, he knew it was tasty. Leaving the tent carefully to avoid knocking it over - again - the Dhani made his way to the already-burning fire. The Master was next to it, washing blood off his hands. Next to him, the remains of some creature, skinned already, but not yet cleaned - and the Master's bird right next to it with unmistakeable intentions. Slither snatched the body before it could get pecked, looking at it for a few seconds. Some stew of sorts would work, he decided. With only two hands, he was forced to leave the body back in the raptor's range. "Don't eat that yet." He told it, pointing at the meat. The animal had proven to be smart enough that he didn't feel silly talking to it. It probably would be able to tell his tone anyways, even if it couldn't understand the words themselves. Still looking back from time to time to keep tabs on the falcon, he went back to his tent, grabbing the cooking pot with one hand and a bundle of tall dry plants from the nearby pile with the other and then making the short way back. He slowly added the plants to the fire to keep it from choking, and hung the cooking pot on top over it, filling it with water and adding a few herbs to it - nothing filling, but apparently they tasted well. Then he grabbed the feline's carcass and, with no cutting instruments to his name, he put one hand in the torso and another on the upper part of one of the legs, and then he pulled until the meat gave. Then he tore off the foot itself, and added the rest of the leg to the water. He repeated the process with the other limbs, and then he tore off what looked like the best cuts of meat, adding a few of them and putting the rest back on the stone, for the bird. Done preparing the Master's food for now, he unhinged his mouth and swallowed the rest of the carcass whole. All that was left for him to do now was wait for the meat to be done.

[Colt]

The Dhani slipped from his tent, coils sliding side to side with predatory rhythm. The hunter couldn’t help but pause to watch—not openly, of course, but subtly, out of the corner of his eye. The blatant mistrust with which the creature regarded all things around him, and the Drykas especially, was one that was a natural part of slavery, though the scar after scar that roped across the snake-man’s body proved that the mistrust had been more than earned. The hunter ground his teeth; it was an abstract feeling that filled him whenever he looked upon the slave, but a strong one. It left him almost… offended. He had been born a beast, and, for all the trappings of civilization that now hung over him, a beast was what he would always feel like. But the Dhani, his beasthood was on the outside. The hunter suspected that that was what had first drawn him to the creature out of all of the slaves in that caravan: his power, the sheer primality of his form had spoken to the Drykas on the deepest of levels. Somewhere, in some twisted way, the Dhani felt like family. And to see how greatly he had been hurt… it filled the hunter with a righteous fury, as if the damage had been done to a brother. And with the caravan long gone, there was nothing he could direct it towards.

She abandoned the sky in response to his call, circling downwards without hurry, and thoughts of Slither were paused. The hunter moved to his own tent and took hold of the quiver that leaned against it. Another morning, another hunt.

He jumped at the half-hissed “Don’t eat that,” and turned to see Slither’s attempt to dissuade the falcon from the carcass. The hunter smiled softly, but still chirped for her attention; if she wanted some of the wildcat she would have it, but that would have to wait until after the hunt. He slung the quiver onto his shoulders, chirped a second time for her attention, and headed back into the grass.

Their home was set in the middle of a number of things; though it was a shade between the Ruby and Topaz Clan districts, it was also situated on the barest outskirts of both. Someone would have to go out of their way to disturb the camp, and it shortened the distance the hunter had to walk to find quarry.

The first thing he came across was a hare trail, but he walked by it after first taking mental note the position for future traps. Another hare trail was nearby, and he noted that one too before continuing on his way. Hunting hares was an activity he rarely partook of, and even then it was something he did alone. With her, the prey of choice was altogether different. Another few minutes and he found what he had been looking for: a grouse trail. It was not quite laying season, so there would be no eggs to scavenge, but it was almost there—which meant that the hens would be heavy and clumsy in the air. While flushing them might be a bit more difficult, they would be slow targets for both her talons and his spears.

He sank into a practiced crouch and moved carefully along the trail; while the grouse’s feathers were colored to match their surroundings, the shape of their bodies stood out sorely. It was because of this that he caught the pear-shaped lump out of the corner of his eye, and a stolen glance confirmed its nature. Though he didn’t spend time looking for the rest of the flock, he had little doubt that it was there; a solitary hen was a dead hen.

He nonchalantly removed a javelin from his quiver and spun it experimentally, signing prey to the sky while giving the grouse no sign that he had seen it. He found his grip, rolled his neck, then wheeled and sent the javelin sailing. He had been close to the hen—within ten strides, at the most—and the throwing spear struck true. The grouse let out a mighty squawk as it was pierced, though it did not die immediately—it instead flapped and screeched in pain and indignation, though whatever wound it had received was too great for it to fly. The alarm had been raised, though, and within seconds four others had taken to the air.

[Khida]

The snake-man snatched the carcass right from under her beak, to which the falcon fluffed her feathers and glowered after him. She grumbled as he set it back down and told her to leave it alone, shifting her weight between feet but not truly taking umbrage at the loss of her presumed breakfast. The snake-man prepared food, that was part of his role in their group; the Kelvic accepted that. Besides, the hunter chirped at her, an invitation to follow as he set off into the grasses. Working for her food was better than sitting around here tempted by what she couldn't yet eat. Besides, she liked hunting. Khida launched herself from the stone, climbing quickly to an altitude comfortable for surveying the hunter and his surroundings. There she alternated between gliding and flapping, maintaining her level as she looked on. He walked on a while, to grasses undisturbed by the routine comings and goings of men and horses and cattle. He checked his pace several times, attention caught by some trace on the ground -- whatever it was, it proved not interesting to the hunter; he continued on. But then he fell into a crouch, easing forward to stalk... something. He reached to his javelins, a signal Khida had no difficulty interpreting, even before he gestured to secure her attention. He certainly had it. The falcon stretched her wings wide to slow her forward motion, almost hanging in the air. His javelin flew, revealing the location of the first grouse to the watching raptor. Others would be... there, as four other groundbirds took sudden flight, hugging low to the grass-stalks and dispersing to four different angles. Khida picked the one whose course would bring it nearest to her position, plummeting down with tightly furled wings, fisted talons outstretched. Gravid, panicked, the grouse either didn't realize its danger or couldn't move in time; the falcon had no way of knowing which. What she knew was the jarring impact of her feet against it, the stretch of her wings for stability and leveling out of her stoop, the tight turn to determine where her prey fell to earth. She caught a glimpse of motion, the last moments of its descent. The falcon glided down more slowly after, backwinging to land on the ground beside it. Khida examined her kill for a moment, then stepped up onto its flank, bobbing down to start plucking feathers. This breakfast was indisputably hers!

[Slither]

The Master's departure for the hunt didn't change much for the Dhani. The first day it had happened, the obvious thoughts of escaping and freedom had managed to crawl their way in through the steely self-control that kept his hopes from ever being voiced, but it had only taken his actual consideration of the idea to realize that he was just as trapped in there as in the caravan's cages. Where in one he was trapped by bars, that kept him from going where he pleased, here he was trapped by the endless expanses of the sea, that he may go anywhere, but he didn't know how to. Still, the Dhani had to admit that with the Master and his pet gone, he felt far more comfortable. It was times like these, when his duties were done and there was nobody to keep tabs on him, that he felt like he was just slightly himself once more, neither tool nor servant. Just... Slither, because he still wasn't worthy of his old name. The first few times it had happened he'd been slightly confused - up to that moment, free time was a valuable commodity, one that usually was translated into more sleep, or maybe food. Here, however, it seemed that life, or at least his life, went at a different pace, and he was faced with having some time to himself on a daily basis. Add to it that he was neither sleep-deprived nor starved in the Master's care, and he was suddenly faced with the perspective of boredom. He recognized that as a luxury, of course - having the time to complain about not having anything to do was something he would've killed for in the mines. Now that he had it, he'd decided to put it to work himself. The decision wasn't conscious, or planned, unlike most of Slither's, as it had begun as a simple passtime, in which he'd take several blades of grass and carefully weave them together. What utility that had was well beyond him, but it had proven to be difficult enough to do with his size to provide him with a challenge, and there were limitless variations on the patterns that he could make, with only just adding more blades. His goal, for the moment, was to find a way to make the woven material as resistant to stretching as possible - up to the moment, he'd had some minor successes, which was encouraging, and right now he was testing one of his theories about another, different kind of herb he'd thought useful. The best part of it all was that, with his front to the cauldron and his coils piled up to his sides, there was no way that the Master could catch him doing that - not unless he somehow managed to sneak past the Dhani's sharp sense of hearing and smell, which he found unlikely. And when he did return, a quick sizzle was all that would be left of the day's work, to be resumed tomorrow. In a sense, the Dhani had stumbled upon one of the few things that could help him while a slave - the acquisition of knowledge. Sure enough, knowing how to weave blades of grass did not seem like a skill that would come in handy in a breakout, but then again he had no intention of using it as such. However, the simple hobby was helping him take his mind off his worries for a while, keep his mind active and, perhaps most important of all, it gave him something to plan for and look forward to the following day. So the Dhani took his blades of grass, and dedicated himself to his weave, with only the merest hint of a smile on his face, his attention split three-ways between the grass, the food - which he wouldn't dare burn, for his own good - and the surrounding area, scanning for when his Master returned.

[Colt]

The grouse didn’t increase her fluttering at the hunter’s approach, occupied as she was by the spear that pinned her to the ground. Her squawks did increase in volume, however, when he plucked her from beneath the bush without ceremony and removed the weapon in her wing. The grouse struggled, desperate, but her struggling ended when the hunter took her head with practiced motions and swung her in an arc, effectively snapping her neck.

A shadow passed in the corner of his vision, signaling his partner’s descent. She had succeeded, then. The hunter took up an easy pace in that direction, kill in hand; with both of them successful and her settling in to eat, there was now a distinct lack of need. Later, yes, there would be more things to do, but now… now, there was only a pleasant lull in activity, and he had no need to hurry anywhere.

He eventually caught sight of the telltale shadows in the grass where the falcon stood over her kill, bobbing rhythmically in her feast. The hunter sat himself on the ground to wait; the fowl was certainly large enough to fill his partner’s stomach, and they had long agreed that he would lay claim to whatever it was she deigned to leave behind. It would be too mangled to fetch a proper price, of course, but he never sold the falcon’s leftovers; the meat and marrow were still perfectly fine, and would surely make a fine addition to the evening’s meal.

His stomach rumbled in response to that thought, reminding him that he had still not broken his fast and that Slither probably had something very good waiting at camp and that he was spending far too much time dallying. He was hungry.

[Caelum]

Grade In Progress

Shahar

Skills
Butchery +1
Hunting + 2
Skinning +1
Tracking +1
Trapping +1
Weapon: Javelin +1
Wilderness Survival (plains/grasslands) +2

Lores
Trapping: Resetting a Trap
Wilderness Survival: Starting a Fire
Wilderness Surival: Caching Food
Skinning: a Wild Cat
Tracking: Hare & Grouse Trail Detection

Khida

Skills
Detection +2
Hunting +1
Observation +1
Wilderness Survival (plains/grasslands) +1

Lores
Wilderness Survival: Catching Food

Slither

Skills
Cooking +2
Intimidation +1
Weaving +1

Lores
Cooking: Stewing Meat
Weaving: Grass

Notes

Please edit your post in the grade request thread to reflect completion and don't hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns.