Flashback To Learn is to Grow

[Ayatah]

8th Spring, 497AV

Ayatah's tenth birthday had been and gone with many celebrations and gifts given to the young girl. She was still recovering from the feasts and dancing, but today - the eighth of spring - was a special day indeed. The clan matriarch, Aya's very own great grandmother, had given the birthday girl a particularly unusual gift. The ancient old woman had sent word to the Mind's Eye, and the enigmatic man who lived there, to request his services.

Amongst her pureblooded relatives, the Mind's Eye was regarded as a mental latrine, where one went to defecate their most idiotic thoughts and wonders. The human who had designed and introduced the service to Taloba was mistrusted by most, and nobody seemed quite sure how he had survived in the Myrian city. Some of the adolescent Scattered Bones boys proposed wacky speculations - that Myri herself had hired the human to educate her people - but even Aya herself doubted that hypothesis.

Nevertheless, the half-breed had always been intrigued by the building, which looked like any other Myrian structure. And yet it was a wolf in sheep's clothing, a well-camouflaged imposter. She had never stepped foot within the place, but had felt an undeniable longing to since she realised what service Filo provided her people.

Education!

No, correction: education about the people beyond the Jungle!

The girl felt another bubble of excitement swelling in her gut as she made her way through Taloba. She was thrilled, but nervous. What if Filo rejected her as a student? Quinneth had assured Aya this would not happen, but the girl was so used to being rejected by her peers that she had come to simply expect it. And worse- what if one of her classmates saw her enter the Mind's Eye? Everyone knew that a barbarian live there, preaching his barbaric ways. If Ayatah - a half-barbarian - was seen anywhere near the place, her lowly reputation would disintegrate even more.

But she was already hooked. Ayatah was addicted even before she'd even ingested her drug of choice: knowledge! She imagined what books lay beyond the walls of the Mind's Eye. Books about everything! Things she couldn't even imagine!

In the dirt streets of Taloba, Ayatah did a little dance to show her excitement. But the grin on her face died as she came closer to the Mind's Eye. The city was as crowded as usual, so it would be difficult for her enter the building without being noticed. She'd had to move quickly, stealthy.

Like a tiger.

And like a tiger - or more accurately, like a baby Tskanna - she stomped towards the squat building and stepped inside.

[Traverse]

There were not quite the same mass of knowledge on display that Ayatah had imagined as her small form walked down a short hall, passing a couple of doors before making her way into the large somewhat domed interior. There were a couple scattered shelves with wooden partitions specifically to hold scrolls. A couple severely faded and worn tapestries covering the walls, and tables covered with various papers, books, and scrolls. A couple shelves held books, but not too terribly many, a lot of spaces blank waiting to be filled.

Filo sat behind one table, examining one scroll with a magnifying glass, and occasionally stopping to write notes with quill and ink in an empty journal nearby. After a few silent ticks, if Ayatah did not break the silence, Filo would glance up, notice the girl rather blankly. A few more ticks registered the girl's purpose to him, and he stood up rather abruptly, a nervous smile sinking onto his features. It wasn't often his services were specifically requested, so it was an opportunity he was loathe to waste.

"Greetings, I am Filo, and you must be...Ayatah?" His Myrian was quite flawless as he approached Ayatah and offered her a hand, that nervousness still hanging about his presence, hand unsure and with no Myrian confidence behind it. His eyes studied her lighter skin and lankier frame with curiousness, though if he had been told about her half breed blood, it wasn't apparent.

"The Scattered Bones must care for you quite a lot to request my services despite your people's disdain for my work. What is it that I can offer you in the realm of learning my dear?"

[Ayatah]

The Myrian child blushed instantly as soon as the human spoke. His Myrian was impressively elegant, practically fluent. Most outsiders who came to the jungle struggled with the mother tongue of the Myrian people, but in Filo's case it seemed to roll out of his mouth naturally. He really must be a genius, she decided, gazing up to the male with clear amazement in her eyes.

He offered his hand, and Ayatah nervously accepted, her dainty child's hand slipping into his and shaking it. She had seen adults shaking hands after coming to some kind of agreement, and doing it made her feel very grown up and important indeed.

However, this confidence melted away when Filo delivered his question to her. None of her clansmen had ever asked why she wanted to visit the Mind's Eye, or what she hoped to learn there. She had simply assumed that they knew the answer, but were scared of hearing her admit it.

She wanted to learn about the Eypharians. There, not so hard.

And yet Aya said nothing, suddenly afraid of articulating the truth. It was one thing to have the desire to learn, but it was quite another level of admit it, to act on it. What she was about to request was blasphemous amongst her people. Even though Filo was not Myrian, saying the words in the presence of another living being made it all the more challenging for Ayatah.

But that need to learn was completely undeniable. It ate its way through her mind, her gut, invaded every cell in her body. She could snuff it out for a short while; pretend that she didn't care what lay beyond the jungle. It was Ayatah's survival technique when amongst her peers. But after a few bells, a day or so at the most, her imagination would be filled with questions. Most of these would remain unanswered, much to Aya's frustration and desperation.

Until now.

"I would like to learn about the people of my father," She replied, trying to be eloquent and deserving of this man's knowledge, "the Eypharians."

[Traverse]

Filo waited patiently for Ayatah's response, hands folded neatly before him, placed gently against his chest. When she finally spoke the words, he picked up on her reluctance, and a small nod of understanding was let loose from his frame.

"Ah, this explains your build and your clan's reluctance to give me a specific subject on which to teach you." There was a distinct lack of judgement in the man's eyes. After all, Ayatah would come to realize, he was no Myrian, and cared not a bit for what her parents were. "The good thing about Eypharians are they like to talk about themselves a great deal, and you know...they are quite a lot like Myrians. See themselves the children of a deity, think of themselves as above other races, though...their culture is vastly different then-" He cut himself off and smiled. "And I suppose that is precisely what you are hear to learn. Let me find a couple books or scrolls, I know I either have some family lineage's or a journal, or periodicals, something. While I'm looking through this Vom's nest of an office tell me what you do know about them, a foundation for us to build upon."

He smiled encouragingly at Ayatah, offering her a seat before beginning to shuffle around glancing through this book or that, pulling out a scroll hear or there, and slowly collecting a few pieces with the knowledge she sought.

[Ayatah]

This snippet of information, so casually thrown out of the human's mouth, sparked a furious passion within the girl. Her eyes widened, her mouth became slack. It was, after all, the first time someone had spoken to her about the Eypharian people without mentioning the term babarian or similar words. It was enlightening, thrilling and exciting. She inched forward, closer to the man as if to catch his words fresh from the human's mouth.

So the multi-armed people were like the Myrians - they came from a deity. But which God? Aya was sure that they didn't originate from Caiyha or Dira, or any other of the deities that her maternal people worshipped. Some desert god, she guessed.

"I know that..." She said slowly, trying to pull out her fractured pieces of knowledge from her memory. Aya owned three books about the Eypharian people, but two were written in Common and one in another, even stranger language. She could recognise the odd word in the former tongue - desert, Eypharian, river - but such reading skills dramatically limited her ability to learn.

She began to turn desperate, and the girl squirmed in her seat as she tried to muster up a fact, any fact. "I know..." She repeated lamely, brow now furrowed and lips pursed. Ayatah would not allow herself to stutter and stumble like a toddler in front of this man. Finally, a slither of information leaked into her conscious and she presented it to the human with a proud grin. "They live in a desert, in Ar-nar-tap --" at the mispronunciation of Ahnatep, her confidence dwindled and suddenly Aya's knowledge of the Eypharians seemed nothing short of pathetic. With a deep sigh, the girl blew out the final fact she knew about her father's people: "And they have six arms. Or four."

[Traverse]

Ayatah did not see Filo's face as he gathered his knowledge on the topic that she sought, though it amounted to an eye rolling and a small inaudible sigh. What had he been expecting? There was a reason they had sent her to him.

When he turned he placed tow leather bound journals and three scrolls on the table. One he immediately unfurled, holding it down with various odds and ends located upon the rough wood. It was a very roughly sketched map, slightly colored, but most certainly unfinished and labeled in dark inked letters 'Ekytol'.

"Ekytol is the the desert region in which the Eypharians hail from. They are from and inhabit the city you mentioned, Ahnatep. One of the only places left of their making after the Valterrian struck" He enunciated the city carefully, then lifted one of the journals and began flipping through it. He stopped on a particular page and plopped it down to face Ayatah, showing her two drawn and colored images of Eypharians, one with 6 arms holding two swords, a shield, and a warhorn, the other two hands poised for dramatic effect, the other with four arms weaving in a complex pattern with each arm. "Eypharians can either have four or six arms, you are correct. I believe that the ones with 6 arms are considered more pure and superior to those with four, but I would learn more about this before actually saying such a thing to another Eypharian." He gave her a small smile.

"Those are the very basics of them. I would not call myself an expert on the matter, though I know a few from experience, and have visited Ahnatep once. Is there anything you specifically wish to know about them?" Filo prepared himself for what he could only assume was to be a flood of questions.

[Ayatah]

Ayatah leant forward in her seat to drink in the details of the map Filo placed in front of her. The only other maps she'd seen were the rough plans of the jungle and Taloba, which her family drew in the dirt to teach her where to go in order to run her errands. But this was entirely different. In the girl's naive young mind, the map laid before was a piece of artwork. She couldn't imagine anything that looked so spectacularly beautiful.

The desert is full of sand. She remembered this from one of her books. Sand, according to her family, was made of thousands of tiny pebbles and stones, all weathered down to be soft and miniscule. The idea still blew Ayatah's young mind, but she was quickly learning that the world beyond her jungle home did not abide by the same rules and realities.

The girl gasped aloud when she saw the six-armed people staring back up at her. They looked fierce, but in a very different way to her maternal people. Less blood thirsty, more... angular, pointed. Her eyes were drawn to the swords held by the first Eypharian. "I didn't think barbarians trained with weapons much." The term used by her maternal people slipped out before Ayatah could stop it. A hand shot to her mouth, and the girl's cheeks flushed pinkly in severe embarrassment. She usually avoided using that word - after all, she was a half-barbarian. But in front of Filo, Aya was realising just how Myrian she truly was.

Ayatah shifted awkwardly in her seat. She desperately wanted to learn, to finally satiate the hunger she'd felt for so long. The girl also wanted Filo to regard as different to her maternal people -- Myri only knew that she was. But so far, she'd disappointed herself. She was better than this. She was smarter.

The only thing she could do was push forward with this lesson and absorb all she could. Aya dropped her defences and spoke earnestly for the first time. "You said they are children of a God, like how we're the children of Myri. But which God?"

[Traverse]

Filo could only chuckle at Ayatah's slip of the tongue as it were. At least she had the decency to look ashamed at the fact that she had inadvertently insulted her tutor. And to speak truly, Filo had been called much, much worse. "There are many advantages to having so many arms, and though they are many things, Eypharians are not lazy. I wouldn't say weapon training is as common as here in Taloba and with Myrians, but when you are learning, it is common for an individual to become well versed in a single weapon swiftly so they can learn to dual wield it."

Once Ayatah had had her fill of looking over the images of the two Eypharians, Filo picked up the journal and began absently flipping through pages awaiting her questions. He glanced up at her as she spoke, the ghost of a smile still upon his lips, then returned his attention to the book. "Ah yes, well...not a God so much as a river spirit. You are familiar with Makutsi I presume?" He continued without seeing whatever response Ayatah might have given. "I do not know the whole of the story, but essentially a fair human and a river spirit given humanoid form by Makutsi are the creators of the Eypharian race." He put the journal back down, another image spanning both pages of a woman at the edge of a river, the waters rising up to encircle her in what appeared to be an embrace.

"Hrm, what else, what else." He put that journal down, and unfurled another scroll, placing it over the partially finished map. It was written in a language Ayatah did not understand, and the words were organized, creating a sort of tree of text, one leading to another one, some branching into multiple different paths of words starting from two at the top. Some were written in different colored ink, and certain embellishments made on or around certain words. Filo dragged his finger down the scroll. "This is a heritage tree of an Eypharian family of The East Winds, one of the four noble houses of Ahnatep. Taloba does not really have the idea of nobility, you earn your place in the city through skill or work, or perseverance. Eypharians believe highly in the quality of bloodlines, that you are born above or below others and deserve things based upon this. Of course there is always room to move within one's class, but it is a different type of struggle than Taloba. These are families, their children, their children's families and so on, for 10 generations. Certain details mark them, say here, this female married a non-eypharian, and her children had only 4 arms, that is where that section of the tree ends, as I doubt the family had much use for them, or they left, or did not obtain good marriages, something that can gain you status when you might not have abilities yourself." He would continue talking if Aya did not ask more questions, going on about lineages and politics, rather foreign concepts to the young halfbreed.

[Ayatah]

"So not a God?" She asked absently, just for confirmation of her own false belief. Ayatah felt a little disappointed over this fact. She'd imagined, in a typical childish way, that she was the daughter of two Gods - Myri, and whichever deity had given rise to the Eypharian people. Filo had disproved that, and Aya felt subsequently very mortal, like a wilted flower.

She had no chance to voice her disappointment though, as her tutor had soon moved on to another topic. Bloodlines. The air caught in Aya's throat as she eagerly leaned forward to gaze upon the complex diagram. A tree?

I thought they came from a river?

Filo's patient explanation earned an appreciated nod and intrigued quirk of the girl's eyebrows. This family was a noble one, but yet again there was that dash of childish hope that had Aya wondering if her father's name was written down on this paper. Not that she would ever recognise it; Paira of the Scattered Bones claimed to be unable to recall the name of the man who had impregnated her, and Aya did not want to press the matter. "Is this family royal?" She asked with a minute frown furrowing her brows.

Although she could see the many differences between the Eypharian people and the Myrians, there was one striking similarity, at least from Aya's viewpoint: they valued purity. A mixed-breed child would struggle to find companionship or sympathy in either culture, apparently. It bought minimal comfort to the girl. "So..." She flashed Filo an embarrassed glance before staring back down to the heritage tree, "my-" she restarted with an awkward cough. Even in front of the barbarian teacher, she did not want to call that man 'father'. "An Eypharian man who has a child with a Myrian... they wouldn't like that? His clan -- family." She corrected herself with a sheepish smile.

Before he could answer, the girl had another pressing question: "Can non-Eypharians move up in their society?" This was at least one aspect of Myrian society that gave her a whisper of acceptance. If Ayatah could prove herself as a worthy warrior, maybe - just maybe - she would be regarded as a whole Myrian and not some broken, shattered part.

[Traverse]

He could sense the child's confusion, the amount of new information that she didn't quite know how to fully process, but despite his ability to impart information, Filo was more used to addressing older individuals, and didn't have the that same understanding of younger beings. He hoped she would retain the information until she was older when it would slowly become more clear to her.

At both of her questions he frowned. "Ah, no your father's family certainly wouldn't have approved of such a union, and...to a certain extent yes you could gain status, but you would be considered a lesser entity because you are not full blooded, and I imagine you would have to be a very skilled warrior to prove that having less arms is not so bad." He paused thoughtfully, knowing this is perhaps not what the girl wanted to hear, though perhaps she was already expecting it. "The Eypharians and Myrians are quite similar...well I believe a lot of races believe that they are superior to others, and that blending bloodlines makes one weaker, or inferior, which I believe to be a mistake on their part."

He turned back to the book, finger running over the lineage absently. "You see for the Eypharians, the pinnacle of their society are six armed Eypharians, this makes you the most noble, the most pure, but there is quite a small number of people able to breed and produce offspring with six arms, and if relations intermingle many illnesses can occur with children, actually damaging individuals, so occasionally Eypharians utilize four armed individuals to stabilize their bloodlines, to prevent this, I think that such grand machinations in order to get this one quality is...quite the waste of resources, when 6 armed, 4, or even 2 every person has merit, strengths and weaknesses of their own."

He looked at Ayatah. "I think your clan must love you quite a lot to allow you to learn about your other half, and I think if you were int he desert with your father, you might not be so lucky." He sat down, rummaging through the collected parchments and journals. "I apologize, I got off track, was there any questions you might have, anything more you might want to know about the Eypharians, or perhaps Ahnatep the city in which they reside? The desert environment surrounding it?"